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BY 

ACHMED ABDULLAH 

tt 

Author of "Night Drums,” "The Honorable 
Gentleman and others,” etc. 



NEW YORK 

BRENTANO’S 

PUBLISHERS 




VZa 

,Pl 

OrpV.?). 


Copyright, 1924, by 
BRENTANO’S, Inc. 

All rights reserved 

To replace lost copy > 

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



LENORE ULRIC, 

That great artist, whom I am privileged 
to call friend. 





The Author wishes to acknowledge his in¬ 
debtedness to Mr. H. P. Burton, editor of 
McCall's Magazine, for his definite and 
helpful courtesies. 


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Wind sank away to the west with a swift 
surge as of innumerable small wings. Sun¬ 
shine dropped to meet the rush of oncoming 
night; glowing on the snowy avalanche of el- 
Korma’s white, flat-roofed houses with molten 
gold and copper; softening the fitful tangle of 
flowers and shrubs in Mustaffa Madani’s neg¬ 
lected garden with pastel shades of lemon and 
orchid and rose and turquoise and elfin green; 
cutting deep, violet shadows into the bazaars 
that teemed and mazed beyond the garden walls, 
twisted and turned there like an industrious 
honeycomb with agile, slender, booth-lined 
alleys and cul-de-sacs; spreading hands of 
somnolence over all that greedy Arab life of 
barter and ruse and secretiveness and violence; 
hushing the street vendors’ guttural cries to a 
note of minor, servile entreaty: 

“Buy!” 

“Buy, 0 Moslems!” 

‘‘Cheap here! Cheap!” 


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“0 chick pease! 0 pips! To sharpen the 
teeth!” 

“‘Dates! I sell dates! All sorts of dates! 
Dates from Al-Hilwah, large and flat and brown! 
Red Jabali dates tasting of summer! Green 
dates from the Khuzaryriyah!” 

“Dates give fever in the month of pil¬ 
grimages! Figs! Buy figs, 0 Moslems!” 

“Apples! Apples! Apples cause sickness 
to depart, and there is no sickness in them!” 

“Buy. . . ” 

“Give way, fathers of dogs!” The mob 
splashed sideways, like a puddle beneath booted 
foot, as an Arab dignitary, fat and leering and 
statuesque, astride a ridiculously small white 
donkey, moved through the bazaar, preceded by 
half a dozen stalwart black servants who were 
shouting insulting and defying words at every¬ 
body, and belaboring with democratic imparti¬ 
ality the backs and thighs of buyer and seller 
alike. 

“0 your right!” they yelled as they brought 
down their long, brass-tipped staves. “0 your 
left! 0 your face! 0 your belly! 0 your 
foot!”—suiting the swing of their sticks to the 
part of Arab or Jew or negro anatomy which they 
were striking. “0 your back, your back, your 


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back! Give way, ignoble and unmentionable 
ones!” 

They disappeared down a winding alley- 

“Bah! Fatted ass!” A small boy thumbed 
his nose at the dignitary’s retreating figure. 

A small girl—she looked like a tiny, golden 
puff-ball—turned and raised her single garment 
expressively. 

“The curve of my back to you!” she jeered. 
“The heel of my spine to your unclean father!” 

And again merchants and customers moiling 
and coiling; here and there friend meeting 
friend, embracing, clasping like wrestlers, 
throwing loud, smacking kisses into the air with 
the tips of their fingers; again the trade cries: 

“Buy!” 

“Buy here!” 

“Sweet water—and gladden your soul! O 
lemonade—lemonade here!” with a rhythmic 
clanking of brass cups. 

“Here is incense! It cures and protects!” 

“Out of the way—” the pant of the water car¬ 
rier, as he staggered beneath a green, bloated 
skin, fit burden for a buffalo—“and say: 
‘There is but One God!’ ” 

“Perfumes from France and Persia! Ah-—• 
the deliciousness of heliotrope! Essence of 


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pear—to play with the senses in the early night! 
Trade with me, 0 mother of a thousand charms 
—here—smell—half a drop on the back of your 
hand!” 

“Rare drugs from the south—to strengthen 
your lover’s manhood!” 

“Onions! Onions!” 

“Eat them yourself and sweeten your breath, 
Jew with the lousy beard!”—a desertman’s lout¬ 
ish, uncalled-for insult, and the other’s foul 
repartee: 

“Father of a rotten smell! May pigs defile 
your mother’s grave! Indeed it has been said 
that every morning you wash your face in a cam¬ 
el’s water!” 

“Ho, seller of pig’s tripe!” the desertman’s 
rage-choked shriek. “Ho, bath servant! Ho, 
brother of a naughty sister! Now—by the teeth 
of God—you shall eat stick!” 

And the “stick eating,” rather painful since 
the stick was a nahbut, an ashen stave six feet 
long and thick as a man’s wrist; and a cry of an¬ 
guish; a falsetto whimpering for mercy: 

“In your protection, my lord! In your pro¬ 
tection, 0 my Head, 0 my Eyes. . . .” 

Laughter. Men taking sides. The begin- 


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ning of a full-fledged, riotous bazaar fight, when 
a white-turbaned priest intervened, a very old 
man, his drawn, crinkly skin the color of ala¬ 
baster, his grey eyes filled with the kindness 
which comes with many years, his beard thinned 
to a straggling, grey tuft. 

“Peace, Moslems!” his words. “Peace—in 
the name of Allah, the Holder of the Scales of 
Justice!” 

“Ullah hadiq. ...” a pious, slightly hypo¬ 
critical murmur; and once more the merchants’ 
wheedling invitations to buy: 

“Here is watercress!” 

“Two bunches for five centimes!” 

“Eggplants! Eggplants! ” 

“Plums! Plums! Round as your breasts, 0 
female pilgrim! Plums—here! Buy the sweet 
and taste the full!” 

“Buy! Buy. . . .” 

The cries overlapped, crossed, mingled in a 
shrewd, puling Semitic symphony. Everybody 
was anxious to finish the business of the day; for 
there was the Arab tradition that no street mer¬ 
chant, under penalty of the morrow’s ill fortune, 
should take home with him unsold wares. 

Sell, thus, even at a loss: 


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“Sixteen oranges! For only three centimes!” 

“Seventeen! For two centimes, 0 daughter 
of the blacksmith! Give me one centime!” 

The daughter of the blacksmith seemed to be 
in an ugly mood. 

“Give? I? To you?” Her rich contralto 
bellied the thin gauze of her face veil. “And 
only yesterday you sold me turnips that were as 
full of vermin as that unclean abomination, your 
turban. Give? I shall give you nothing ex¬ 
cept, belike, the flat of my hand against your 
lean buttocks, 0 noseless son of a Jew and a she- 
hyena!” 

“ Wah /” came the man’s prompt and unchiv- 
alrous rejoinder. “I was wrong in trying to 
trade with you. You have not even the price of 
a single peanut’s shell tied in the strings of your 
dirty drawers, 0 mother of sixteen dogs! Give 
even yourself, your lips and your breasts, for 
the smell of half an orange—and I would call 
the bargain ruinous—by Allah and by Allah!” 

Laughter. The laughter of the Orient. Ex¬ 
aggerated, peaking to a gurgling, hysterical fal¬ 
setto. Then, suddenly, dropping two octaves to 
a cavernous, guttural hiccough. 

Again the minor, whining entreaty: 

“Buy!” 


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“Buy here!” 

“Ten centimes!” 

“Cheap! I am losing money—may I be 
father to my sons!” 

“Only your wife knows if you are!” This 
from the daughter of the blacksmith. 

Across the street, the Mosque of the Five 
Swords reared its minaret of rosy stone overlaid 
half way up with a faience tiling of dusky, pea¬ 
cock green sheen. The muezzin’s voice, chant¬ 
ing the Maghrib , the last prayer of the day, 
drifted out suddenly, stilling the tumult: 

“Es salaat wah es salaam aleyk , yah auwal 
khulk Illah wah khatimat russul Illah —peace be 
with Thee and the glory, 0 first-born of the crea¬ 
tures of God and seal of the apostles of God! 
Hie ye to devotion! Hie ye to salvation! 
Prayer is better than sleep! Prayer is better 
than food! Bless ye God and His Prophet! 
Come, all ye faithful!” 

“Wah khatimat russul Illah —” mumbled the 
crowd, turning and bowing in the direction of 
Mecca, while some hurried to enter the mosque 
that was raised on a flight of broad steps, its mag¬ 
nificent horseshoe gateway covered with delicate 
Moorish arabesques in black and gold, its great 
architectural masses defining themselves with 


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that firm simplicity of breadth and grandeur 
which is so typical of Islam’s profound, mono¬ 
theistic instinct. 


* * * * 

On the flat roof-top of his house Mustaffa 
Madani listened. He looked into the street, at 
the people, the Mosque of the Five Swords, the 
muezzin standing there sharply outlined in the 
rays of the dying sun. 

Mustaffa Madani’s face, narrow, high-nosed, 
was like a sardonic vignette. His mouth was 
thin and bitter. 

“Wah khatimat russul Illah —” he echoed. 

There was no faith in his voice, nor hope. 

* * * * 

He turned to the young girl who sat by his 
side. 

“And why should I praise God?” he asked. 
“Why should I bless the Prophet, my ancestor? 
Ah—the burden of our ancient race is hard to 
bear, little daughter. . . .” 

“Yes, Father,” she replied, automatically, 
without interest, without conviction. 


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She was small and white skinned. Her eyes 
were intensely brown and curiously innocent. 
Only the powerful molding of her chin and the 
curve of her long throat gave indication of slum¬ 
bering passions. She was sweet with the 
sweetness of her sixteen years. But she 
was not yet complete; seemed more like a 
lovely sketch for the glorious promise of her 
maturity. 

There was a tinge of ruddy gold in her hair, 
speaking of an admixture of Norse blood. And, 
indeed, tradition had it that many centuries ear¬ 
lier, when her family had ruled Spain as a Mos¬ 
lem province, one of her ancestors had tilted a 
lance in bloody tournament with the Christian 
Duke of Languedoc for the flower and glove and 
heart of the daughter of Roderic, the Gothic king 
of Granada—in the dead, medieval days when 
harshly conflicting faiths—paradoxically, or 
logically—taught tolerance; before a brittle, un¬ 
bending orthodoxy of scientific atheism bred 
prejudices and racial hatreds; before a hack¬ 
neyed, sterile, pseudo-rationalistic sciolism took 
the place of the Arc of the Covenant and a self- 
made anthropologist’s sensationalism and print- 
clouted theorems were substituted for Leviticus 
and Pentateuch. 


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It was due to this tradition that she owed her 
name: Gouthia, the Gothic Princess. 

“Weled eth-thibi —the son of the wolf, they 
called me once/’ her father went on. “And 
what am I today but a mock and a stench 
throughout Tunis, in the nostrils alike of Mos¬ 
lem and Christian and Jew? I—a Shareef, a 
descendant of the True Prophet—peace on Him 
and His family. . . .” 

“Peace on Him!” Gouthia droned 

mechanically. 

“Peace on Him and the blessings!” chimed 
in el-Fosiha, the only servant of the house, a 
wrinkled, plum colored old negress from the 
Sahara, who squatted on her haunches between 
father and daughter, rocking from side to side 
like a chained jungle beast to ease the strain on 
her ankles, her naked, shriveled, pendant breasts 
jerking ludicrously to and fro, like empty sau¬ 
sage skins. 

She coughed discreet warning and winked a 
red-rimmed, rheumy eye at Gouthia who was 
tapping her narrow feet on the broken, tes¬ 
sellated mosaic of the roof-top, her full lips 
opening to an incipient yawn. 

“The burden of our ancient race is hard to 
bear—” repeated Mustaffa Madani. 


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Gouthia hardly listened. 

She knew it all by heart. 

* * * * 

She looked out upon the streets of el-Korma, 
running their dim, tortuous ways; upon the 
faded Andalusian beauty of the Mosque of the 
Five Swords; upon the bazaar that more and 
more each year, as her father was forced to 
sell pieces of his ancestral property, encroached 
upon the weed-choked garden with shallow 
booths and shops and shadowy alcoves of 
bright, scented merchandise and the bee-hive 
buzzing of barter and trade. 

She looked out upon all that motley North Af¬ 
rican world—color of romance, color of blood, 
color of pestilence—passing and repassing: 
Arabs, solemn, impassive, statuesque a lan¬ 
guor of light in their immobile gaze; Touaregs 
from Timbuktoo with their sinister face veils, 
a glint and crackle of steel in their tightly girded 
waist shawls; bare-legged, vulpine Bedawins in 
folds of earth brown wool, swaggering with the 
beggar’s insolence of their breed; negro women 
with children at the naked breast; thin-featured, 
large-eyed, listless Tunisian dandies in delicate 


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silk burnooses of pistache and heliotrope and old 
rose, jonquils stuck gallantly over their small 
ears, some ogling the unveiled women—Jewesses 
and Sicilians—and others shamelessly fondling 
the shoulders of painted, corrupt dancing-boys 
who tripped mincingly by their side; sheykhs of 
the faith, bearing over-great, green turbans that 
weighed more than their heads; ill-mannered, 
staring European and American tourists, sneer¬ 
ing because they could not understand, laughing 
because, somehow, they felt embarrassed; full¬ 
breasted Djerba Jewesses covered with the crude, 
sand molded silver jewelry of the desert; Span¬ 
ish colonists whose faces seemed in arms; ruddy¬ 
skinned Chaouias with the freedom of gait and 
the unblenching eyes of their roystering ilk; 
tawdry, furtive, nervous Greeks and Levantines; 
scant-bearded Riffians stalking along in all the 
dignity of pride and dirt; Moroccan Arabs with 
a hint of Goth and Vandal blood in blue eyes 
and honey yellow hair; a Catholic missionary 
bishop whose face was marred rather than helped 
by the relic of boisterous, vinous beauty that 
was in acrid, almost indecorous, altogether 
tragic contrast to his clerical garb, his shovel 
hat, and the great, pitiful crucifix on his 
breast. . . , 


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Passing. Repassing. 

Talking. Gossiping. Laughing. Intensely, 
enormously alive. 

* * * * 

Just beyond the walls. 

And so far away from her. ... 

* * * * 

So far away. . . . 

But she could sense the spell of the unknown 
sealed in that hectic, coiling life below—the 
spell of a new fate and new desires and new 
hopes calling her away from this ramshackle old 
house that seemed to teem with the grey ghosts 
of the dead centuries. 

Ghosts of her father’s bitter remembrance. 

For Mustaffa Madani judged each phase of 
life, his own as well as others’, by the pictures 
of the past in the back cells of his brain. 

These pictures never weakened; never 
changed; never receded. 

They were his eternal and quite futile protest 
against the world as he found it today; had to 
live it, live in it, today—with France, Europe, 


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Christendom, driving the merciless chariot of 
her machine-made, steel-fashioned, brutally effi¬ 
cient civilization across a supine Arab world 
steeped in small gossip and footling feuds and 
sensuous fatalism; with his own breed, the Sha- 
reefian families, the direct descendants of the 
Prophet Mohammed, the former rulers of this 
land, watching the chariot’s crunching progress 
—watching it with stony eyes and bitter, tense 
souls—watching it helplessly, hopelessly— 
watching it wrapped in the dignity of a people at 
whose back twelve hundred years of unbroken 
racial pride, culture, and achievement were sit¬ 
ting in solemn, graven rows. 

He was unable to reconcile himself to his day 
and generation. 

“He wears a veil upon a veil,” said his friend, 
Abubekr Sabri, the sheykh of the Molawee 
dervishes. 

There, then, was the tragedy of his life. 
There, too, the ironic, pantaloonish comedy, 
reminiscent of some cruel old Italian panto¬ 
mime. 

Not that he himself thought it either tragic or 
comic. 

For, after all, we cannot ask an Arab to be 
astonished at the fact of being an Arab. We 


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cannot expect a fact to be mystified by the fact 
of being a fact. 


* * * * 

Had you probed Mustaffa Madani’s soul and 
brain with the lancets and scalpels and bone- 
scrapers of psychological vivisection, you would 
have found little there except the immemorial, 
unbending haughtiness which had been the 
strength, the causality, and the pivotal hinge of 
his forefathers’ achievements as they swept out 
of the yellow Arabian waste to bring half the 
western world under the spurred heel of Islam; 
and which today, still unbending, brittle, con¬ 
tentious, but opposed by a modem, superior, and 
more ruthless strength, had become the weakness 
of their latter-day descendants. 

The anarchic principles of individualistic Is¬ 
lamic life—what could they do against the prin¬ 
ciples, also anarchic, but dovetailing and organ¬ 
ized, of western aggression? 

The four-square, wire-drawn, algebraic Is¬ 
lamic faith that needed neither intellectual nor 
miraculous subsidy, that dispensed with spiri¬ 
tual middlemen between God and man’s soul— 
what could it do against an up-to-date and intol- 


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erant Christian paganism, bred—curiously—by 
revivalism and transcendentalism plus business 
sense? 

The harmony of superb Moslem singleness— 
what could it do against the cacophony of mod¬ 
ern mental erosion? 

The mood of the Psalms—what could it do 
against the mood of jazz? 

Incapable of adjusting himself to new condi¬ 
tions and new ethics, Mustaffa Madani could not 
understand this present era in which gold and 
yard-stick and mendacious publicity had super¬ 
seded his own more picturesque if less practical 
scaling of life’s values. 

There was not in his desert-bred heart the 
hardy, provident wit to put his head and his 
hands to lawful enterprise. Nor could repeated, 
painful experiences convince him that a pure 
lineage was of less account in the modern world 
than a knowledge of arithmetic and the simple 
business preliminaries of European colonial 
finance which said that two and two make five 
if you are the seller, three if you are the buyer. 

To the glorious, centrifugal stupidity of his 
mind, the idea that anybody not a Shareef, be 
he Jew or Christian or fellow-Moslem, could 
ever be his equal, or even pass for a gentleman, 


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was not only fantastic and fabulously grotesque, 
but appeared as something basically immoral, 
striking at the very elementals of his ethical 
faith more so than it would have to his ances¬ 
tors of thirty generations .ago, since the latter, 
busy with founding the facts for their, claims of 
superiority, had not the time to think out the rea¬ 
sons nor to codify them. 

His pride was exactly like an eagle, narrowing 
its circles, always on the verge of swooping down. 

But there was never anything there to swoop 
down to; nothing there to carry off and devour. 

Five years earlier, the French governor- 
general, anxious to have the good-will and loyal 
support of the leading Arab clans, had called 
on him in state to offer him—a sheer matter of 
administrative, colonial courtesy, hardly im¬ 
portant enough to be labeled as administrative, 
colonial bribery—a high French decoration. 

Mustaffa Madani had raised his eyebrows. 
He had sent back the captain of Spahis who was 
the governor-general’s aide-de-camp with the 
shattering message that he was not at home to 
His Excellency, nor ever would be. 


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Pressed for reasons, he had replied: 

“How can I receive him, captain? Why—I 
am a Shareef. And he . . . ?” 

“He is the governor-general!” 

“Yes, yes. But . . ” 

“But . . . ?” 

“Mah li-hoom asl —his people are not of the 
lineage.” 


* * * * 


The lineage! 

Consider. 

And be it mentioned in parenthesis that 
the governor-general, Count Odon-Marie de 
Lubersac-Crespigny, traced his paternal descent 
to the Merovingian kings while a legendary and 
picaresque maternal ancestry connected him with 
Melusine, the water fairy. 

Be it mentioned, too, that he was a typical 
French bureaucrat, meticulous, unimaginative, 
harsh and exact with a Latin’s buskined, 
buckram-lined ratiocination. 

Be it mentioned, furthermore, that Mustaffa 
Madani’s naif arrogance—which an English 
governor-general would have dismissed with a 
laugh and something akin to sympathetic admira- 


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19 

tion—did not help him with the French colonial 
authorities and that on several subsequent oc¬ 
casions, when he was engaged in litigations over 
mortgaged property with native or European 
usurers, judgment was given against him, and 
that his taxes were raised, impoverishing him 
more and more. 

Still—he shrugged his shoulders, spread elo¬ 
quent hands—these people were not of the 
lineage. 

Nothing else mattered, though today, in the 
evening of his life, he was stripped of all his 
possessions except a miserable patch of olive 
trees on the outskirts of town whose yearly crop 
was not worth the price of a cotton turban, and 
this ramshackle palace with its dwindling, weed- 
choked garden . . . nothing remained of it ex¬ 
cept, stronger than neglect, stronger than the 
bleak hand of poverty, a tremendous parterre 
of roses, creepers as well as bushes, scrambling 
and growing in their own strong-willed fashion, 
clothing stones with hearts of deep ruby, build¬ 
ing arches of glowing pink and tea yellow against 
the tight, pigeon-blue sky, lifting shy, single, 
dewy heads in hushed comers. 

Terribly tragic, the palace itself. 

Years had passed since the fagade had been 


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white-washed, and now it had taken on a golden 
tint, like an ancient Spanish cathedral. There 
was hardly a suspicion left of the arabesques 
and geometric designs that crusted the marble 
frames of the windows. The outer gate, once 
inlaid with bits of jade and coral and chryso- 
prase, showed holes where the jewels had been 
picked out—and sold. 

Inside, a wilderness of vaulted, echoing 
spaces; a maze of stairs and corridors; literally, 
hundreds of rooms, with ceilings of stucco and 
gilt, with walls of fretted, pink marble; bal¬ 
conies which clung like birds’ nests to the 
sheer sides of the house; doors of ebony and 
teak and bronze—and everything dusty and 
empty. 

Not much dignity. Dignity of poverty. 

Just age; and decadence; and—yes—dirt. 

* * * * 

Only one servant of the hundred-hundred 
servants. 

El-Fosiha, the wrinkled old negress who had 
not left him because of the love in her heart and 
the pity in her soul. 


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21 


* 5*5 

It was with food in that drab, pathetic house¬ 
hold as it was with clothes. Poor, both; scanty; 
for himself, his daughter, and the servant. 

And it needed many trips to the other end of 
el-Korma where, in his shop in the Bazaar of 
the Moroccan Jews, Abraham Maimonides would 
salaam deeply and hide an ironic smile and 
offer a pittance for whatever Mustaffa Madani 
came to sell: a rug, a strip of garden land, a 
rusty old dagger, a carved Cairene stool, a bit 
of silver jewelry that once had graced the throat 
of a great Shareefian lady. 

Then both Jew and Arab would bargain, each 
after the manner of his kind. 

The latter would use the weapon of the weaker 
party and damn the Jew’s family root and branch 
for three generations; and the other, being the 
stronger, would take it all with salaams and 
smiles, consoling himself with the profit which 
he was going to reap, and giving to Mustaffa 
Madani a tithe of what the article was worth. 

“Rebecca-my-star,” Abraham Maimonides 
would say to his plump, good-looking wife after 
each visit, “that Moslem is a face of misfortune. 


22 


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Me he cursed and you and the children and the 
unborn children in your womb—may there be 
many—and my parents—may they reach 
paradise!” 

“What do you care? Every sheep is sus¬ 
pended by its own heels!” 

“True enough, Rebecca-my-gold! And the 
profits on the sheep are mine. Hayah-hayah 
... he is like an ebony tree back home in 
Morocco—that Moslem! He cannot bend. But 
he is brittle for all his brave airs and hollow 
inside—and one day a storm will come and 
break him to pieces . . .” 

“What of it?” 

“Nothing! I’ll buy the pieces!” 

* * * * 

Thus Abraham Maimonides’ judgment. 

Thus, too, the judgment of the other towns¬ 
people, Jews and Arabs and native Christians. 

Slightly amused they were and decidedly ir¬ 
reverent, though they salaamed deeply and spoke 
courtly, gliding words whenever Mustaffa Ma- 
dani passed. 

It is a moot point why, sneering at him, ridi¬ 
culing him, aware of his poverty and impotence, 


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23 


they salaamed. Perhaps because, atavistically, 
these decendants of people whom Mustaffa 
Madani’s ancestors had ruled with an iron fist, 
still feared the empty symbol after its meaning 
had vanished; perhaps because, deep down, it is 
snobbism which rules the human heart, because, 
subconsciously, they were ashamed of it—and 
tried to apologize to themselves with a parallel 
power of satirizing that which was more compel¬ 
ling than their logic and knowledge of facts. 

He noticed it. He understood. He knew 
what they thought. 

At times he complained of it to his daughter 
and his servant; but never to himself. 

For, in reality, he did not care. 

His pride was such that it did not need the 
applause of others. Such applause might even 
have appeared to him as arrogance. 

Medieval he was in his conviction that a man’s 
income or official position or even learning and 
civic worth and greatness of character could 
never be a touchstone of merit. There was his 
blood; always his blood; and he guarded it as 
carefully as he guarded his last remaining 
thoroughbred and Gouthia, his daughter. 

Pride waxed fat upon his poverty; and pov¬ 
erty shrank lean upon his pride. 


24 


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* * * * 

He spoke often to Gouthia of the past, 
wishing, though he loved her dearly, that 
she had been a son so as to understand him 
better. 

There was in his telling the tang and zest and 
clank of the old days; days in the south, in the 
desert, when the men of his tribe, the Benni 
Iddrissi, now scattered to the four winds of the 
Mediterranean Littoral, would sweep out of the 
sand waste mounted upon dromedaries, over a 
thousand of them, nodding in their lofty, peaked 
saddles to the deep gait of their animals, with 
a cold glisten of iron and the black song of war, 
bent upon foray or raid; or perhaps bent on 
desert sports, the fantasia, the lab-el-baroda, the 
powder play of the nomads in honor of a visiting 
sheykh. 

He would describe at length, relishing each 
word, each memory, how they charged, in 
couples, by tens, by hundreds, one by one, for¬ 
wards and backwards, firing and yelling without 
cessation, on every side horses and camels pranc¬ 
ing, weapons glittering in the sun, burnooses 
floating in the breeze, of all colors, red and 
purple and orange and yellow and black and 


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25 


pink and white, mingling into a rainbow for 
the space of a moment, then dissolving to form 
fresh, audacious harmonies as the desertmen 
galloped in ever new combinations. 

He would describe—and grow young in the 
telling—how they would dart by like winged 
phantoms, old and young, men of colossal pro¬ 
portions, strange and terrible figures erect in 
their square silver stirrups, with heads thrown 
back, hair streaming loose in the wind and mus¬ 
kets held aloft, and small, beardless youngsters 
perched like monkeys on their high saddles; and 
each, as he discharged his rifle into the air or 
leveled his black, tufted bamboo lance, giving 
his savage war cry: 

“Here am I! I!” 

“Oh, my mother!” 

“In the name of Allah!” 

“To my horse!” 

“To my honor!” 

“To my beloved!” 

“Wah !”—typically Arab—“to myself!”; 
and racing up and down, bending and twisting 
from their saddles, loosing their turbans and 
throwing them on the ground, turning in full 
career and picking them up with the point of 
lance or sabre or musket. 


26 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

He spoke of it again tonight. 

Spoke bitterly of the change that had come 
over the land; that had come over him: 

“A mock I am throughout Tunis—and old, 
old. . . 

“No, no, master!” exclaimed el-Fosiha. 

“Yes. I know. Old. Impotent. Not even 
your shriveled, black old breasts would bloat 
to the touch of my lips!” He sighed; touched 
his closely cropped beard. “Look! Death 
sends his challenge in a grey hair. . . 

* * * * 

Gouthia hardly listened. 

She loved her father. Her loyalty to him was 
of that unflinching, flinty quality that genera¬ 
tions of her race had rendered to the men of 
her clan. 

Her father could do no wrong. To her he 
was perfect, the kindest, bravest, cleverest man 
on earth; and if the world did not give to him 
the homage which was his due, then the world 
was to be despised and pitied. 

But she was young, so pitifully young; and 


SHACKLED 


27 


the past days of her father’s remembrance were 
old and dead and buried; and at times she felt 
lonely; and out there beyond the garden walls 
was life, new life, keen life, waiting for the 
coming of her feet, the lifting of her veil. 

* * * * 

Had she been a young western girl, American 
or English, she would have known how to explain 
it, at least vaguely, in her own secret thoughts; 
would have told herself that she wished to live 
her own life, to express herself to herself, to 
carry the strength of her own instead of other 
people’s convictions and reactions. Perhaps she 
would not have been exactly sure how; would 
only have known that, whatever it was, even 
though she did not clearly realize hidden cause 
and eventual effect, she wanted to experience— 
something. Not necessarily love; the freeing 
touch and swing of sex. Still—again—some¬ 
thing; something to do, rather something to be 
—alone, herself, without questions from any¬ 
body, thanks or replies to anybody, considera¬ 
tion for anybody. 

But being an Oriental girl, an Arab, a Mos- 
lema, sheltered by the veil of Islam—and the 


28 


SHACKLED 


matter of the veil, slight in the telling, is enor¬ 
mous in the feeling—she only knew that this 
veil was all about her, like a sodden, stifling 
blanket, that it weighed upon her life, her heart, 
her brain and body, that beyond its pitiless, 
medieval gauze fabric dim souls, dim lives, dim 
facts and fancies flitted, whispering to her in 
gliding undertones, calling to her as across an 
abyss. 

She was afraid of this outside world, beyond 
the veil, beyond the garden walls. Yet she de¬ 
sired it with all her young blood; felt, as she 
desired, the curious premonition of a conflict 
between a crisis of her senses and a crisis of her 
own conscience. Illy explained, turgid and vis¬ 
cous, formless, mysterious as it was to her brain, 
it yet lay on her consciousness, reacted on her 
subconsciousness, as something tremendously 
worthwhile and important and dangerous and 
fascinating that filled her with a kind of puzzled, 
dread wonder and longing and hope. She felt 
—felt continuously, enervatingly—as she had at 
that moment, four years earlier, when puberty 
had come to her, suddenly, rather cruelly as it 
does to children of the Orient, with a sensation 
part caress and part itch, part longing and part 
shame, part brutality and part listless surrender. 


SHACKLED 


29 


She was luckier than the average English or 
American girl of her age in so far as she was 
not top-heavy with knowledge, nor with the in¬ 
tellect’s uneasy, nervous groping after knowl¬ 
edge, truth, and abstract thought. Uncon¬ 
sciously, she agreed to the Moslem dictum that 
intellect as such produces more errors than veri¬ 
ties; that truth, be it engendered by knowledge 
and research or engendered by self, is seldom 
susceptible of embodiment and, when embodied, 
often more hurtful than helpful; that thought, 
the thesis, is less enduring and important than 
substance, the fact. 

Character—had she been able to reason it 
out—was to her not a degree of truth, but a 
degree of life—and life was both more subtle 
and more stark than a single chilly truth. 

* * * * 

Her father talked on. She did not reply. 

Night came, trailing a purple cloak. 

She looked into the distance with starry eyes. 
A desert wind sprang up, and on its wings a 
young voice drifted, singing a throaty, falsetto 
Tunisian love song: 

“Ouh ghramhoom fi hshaya dairnl mqam 


30 


SHACKLED 


Audi shahoodoo tadri 

Djish elghram. . . .” 

The voice faded into the night. There came 
a void of silence. 

She sighed. 

She knew about love, the physical side of it. 
She knew the gestures and effects of sex rela¬ 
tions, vicariously, it is true, but down to their 
last, twisting ramifications. Her knowledge 
might have surprised many a western man of 
the world, would have shocked most. For she 
was an Oriental. Thus she saw neither shame 
in it, nor mystery. 

She only saw mystery in the fact that the 
singer, whoever he was, was singing to somebody, 
Arab girl or negress or Jewess, but not to her— 
not to her . . . and she felt in her soul a pain 
that was somehow sweet. 

“We are all in the guardianship of God,” she 
mumbled. 

Mustaffa Madani looked up. 

“What, daughter?” 

“Oh—nothing. I am tired. I am going to 
bed.” 

She rose. 

“Sweet dreams, daughter.” 

He held out his arms. She kissed him. She 


SHACKLED 31 

crossed the roof-top; stopped; turned at the 
head of the stairs: 

“Are you coming, nurse?” 

“Presently. I have to talk to your father.” 
“About what?” 

“Oh—things of the house.” 

“Good night, nurse!” 

“Good night, young soul of my old soul!” 

* * * * 


Gouthia left. 

El-Fosiha waited until the echo of her foot¬ 
steps had completely disappeared. Then she 
moved close to Mustaffa Madani, squatting be¬ 
fore him, touching his knee with a withered, 
gnome-like hand. 

He looked down at her, smiling half-ironically 
as if he knew what she was going to say; knew, 
too, the uselessness of it. 

He was quite motionless, except for one foot. 
He had thrown his right leg across his left, and 
the right foot, bare, with its gleaming, arched 
instep, trembled so violently that the light, yel¬ 
low leather slipper which hung from the big toe 
swung to both sides like the pendulum of a 
clock. 


32 SHACKLED 

“Things of the house you wish to speak to me 
about, eh?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

“No more rice in the bin, I suppose? No 
more salt, no more sugar? Must I go to the 
Jew tomorrow and sell him my hide for the price 
of old leather? Allah! Life to the poor is a 
paradise in which hogs feed!” 

“No, no . . ” 

She shook her head. Their relations were 
the typical relations between master and serv¬ 
ant in the Orient, a strange mingling of utter 
servility and utter, brutal, democratic frankness, 
the whole spiced with the picturesque abuse of 
Islam. 

“It is not that,” she went on. “There is 
never enough rice, never enough salt and sugar, 
and there is always the Jew—cursed be that 
malodorous goat, his father! Never enough 
food! My belly knows—” she slapped her 
naked, shriveled stomach—“and yours! All 
Tunis knows! Why should I speak of it?” 

“What then—?” 

“It is tonight,” she went on passionlessly, “that 
you are a very great fool, Heaven-Born.” 

“Better a fool than a toothless old black she- 
ape!” came his reply, equally passionless. 


SHACKLED 


33 


“Better a toothless old black she-ape,” she 
completed the pleasant round of Oriental meta¬ 
phors, “who has no soul and thus cannot be 
held responsible for sins, than a fool—with a 
soul—and a wicked soul, a selfish, putrid, 
filthy, dung-spotted soul—such as . . 

“Such as . . . ?” 

“Such as you have, 0 my master! Wah!” 
She spat out the exclamation, pointing at him 
with an eloquent and inexorable thumb. “You 
are as wrong and wicked as Musboot, the Devil, 
the unclean Lord of lies and fleas!” 

“Am I, indeed?” He was sardonically 
amused. 

“Yes, by the Prophet!” 

“Close your mouth lest your teeth catch cold, 
0 Quite Useless!” he laughed, not at all 
offended. 

Then, after a pause, he continued, more 
seriously: 

“And you mean what, exactly?” 

“That you were right before!” 

“When, old woman?” 

“There are indeed grey hairs in your beard— 
the messengers of death.” 

“What of it?” He shrugged his shoulders. 
“Death has his rope around the heels of all of 


34 


SHACKLED 


us and at the appointed time he pulls. Death 
is a blind camel that comes out of the dark with¬ 
out warning or jingling of bells. Who can es¬ 
cape what is written on the forehead?” 

“Nobody can,” agreed the negress. 

“Well—there you are! Why speak of it?” 

“But, after your death, what of Gouthia, your 
daughter, your only child, your only kin? She 
will be quite alone in the world. Before this I 
spoke to you about . . .” 

“I know!” he interrupted impatiently. “Mar¬ 
riage, eh?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why will barren old spinsters and old women 
past the age of temptation always blab about 
marriage?” 

“Barren old spinster? I?” she screeched 
angrily, flicked on the raw. “Did you not come 
to my bed—once—years ago—and . . . ?” 

“I was fifteen years old, and with ardent, 
warm intestines. Youth will kiss a goat!” 

* * * * 


Silence. 

“Listen, Heaven-Born—” she began again. 
“No, no, no!” 


SHACKLED 


35 


“She is sixteen, Heaven-Born! She is in the 
flower of her youth, her beauty, her desires. 
Her heart clamors for the touch of love. Clam¬ 
ors her body.” 

“You—how do you know—?” he demanded 
with quick, ugly suspicion. 

“How can I help knowing?” 

“Did she say so?” he insisted. 

“No!” 

“Then—how . . . ?” He smiled; felt 
relieved. 

“I know just the same! Am I not a woman? 
And, being a woman, can I not feel another 
woman’s secret longings?” 

“You—a woman?” he exclaimed contemp¬ 
tuously. 

“What else? Old—yes—and toothless and 
wizen! But, even before you came to my bed, 
I knew about love. Once I, too, was desired and 
kissed in the black tents . . .” 

“Aye!” came his hooting laughter. “In the 
black nights! The light of a single star would 
have doomed you!” 

“Aughrr!” she hissed like a wild-cat; then 
swallowed her rage. “Listen . . .” 

“No!” 

“But ...” 


36 SHACKLED 

“Be silent, mother of two left feet—and bring 
me my pipe!” 

“I will not be silent—and I will not bring you 
your pipe—no—by the crimson pig’s bristles!” 
Her voice leaped up shrilly. “You have no 
heart, no pity, no understanding, 0 creature! 
I tell you—Gouthia must marry. . . .” 

“Must? Yes. Must. But whom? Who 
shall be the father of her sons, of my grandsons? 
There is not her equal in blood in el-Korma nor 
in all the countryside. She is a Shareef. She 
is of the lineage. And you—you ask me to 
. . . Fool!” He was rapidly losing his temper; 
rose; faced el-Fosiha with wooden, stabbing ges¬ 
tures. “Would you wish me to mate my blood 
with the unclean spawn of the bazaar gutters— 
with Jews, belike, or negroes—or pig-eating 
Christian infidels who divide their God by three 
and five?” 

“There are still Arabs in Tunis.” 

“They are not of the lineage!” 

His face, the white moon rays cutting across 
it as clean as with a knife, looked dark and tense 
and medieval, as if carved out of some old 
waxed, close-grained wood; almost Gothic; 
Gothic, too, the expression, half impassive and 


SHACKLED 


37 


half exalted, the face of a pitiless leader or a 
pitiless dreamer. 

“Not of the lineage!” he repeated; and, in 
the words, he seemed to be tasting the delight of 
some amazing and mysterious sensation. 

* * * * 

The old negress stood her ground, firmly, 
bravely. 

“Lineage!” she sneered. “Can you eat your 
lineage? Can you sell it? Can you drink it? 
Blood of the Prophet, are you? Cousin-in-blood 
to a stinking dung-heap—that is what you 
are. . . .” 

“Allah!” he cut raucously through her abuse. 
“You old black bitch! Curse you all the angels! 
Curse you all the Moslems! Let all the heathens 
curse you!” His face grew livid with rage. 
His right hand closed about the short, knotted 
whip that hung from his waist shawl. “I shall 
flay the black hide off your back, you . . .” 

Quite suddenly, he regained his temper. He 
smiled very gently. 

“Never mind, 0 my mother,” he went on. 
“We have grown old together and poor. Come, 


38 


SHACKLED 


faithful old slave. Do not break your heart nor 
mine because of empty, tinkly words—because 
of the cruel sport of it. . . .” 

But still she argued until at last she under¬ 
stood that there was no persuading him. 

He stood there, motionless, serene. 

Might as well plead with some haughty, sar¬ 
donic, deaf immensity, without nerves, without 
heart, she said to herself. 

Then another idea came to her. 

She spoke it: 

“And what will Gouthia live on after your 
death?” 

He did not reply. 

But he looked up. He seemed amazed, as if 
he had never thought of it before or perhaps, 
fearing the unformed thought subconsciously, 
had refused to crystallize it in his brain. 

She felt it. And, woman-like, she drove 
home her point without mercy. 

“The house is mortgaged to the roof,” she 
said. “The Jew has a lien on the bricks—aye 
—and on the rats in the cellar, the vermin 
in the walls, the snakes in the garden. What 
else is there? A horse with foundered 
fetlocks . . .” 

“A thoroughbred!” he interrupted, his greater 


SHACKLED 39 

grievance disappearing momentarily in the les¬ 
ser. “The horse is a thoroughbred!” 

“Yes—but with foundered fetlocks in spite 
of its blood—like yourself! What else is there? 
A mangy slooghy hound—three cats—seven 
chickens—a mass of rotten old furniture—and 
myself! And what else? Hey? What else? 
Nothing, Heaven-Born! Nothing at all! And 
how is Gouthia going to live? How is she going 
to buy food and drink? Tell me! Tell me!” 
Her voice rose a hectic octave. “How? How? 
How? I shall tell you how, 0 great fool!” 

And, cruelly, each word flicking across the 
man’s soul like the sting of a whip: 

“There is but one path. You know—before 
this women of the Shareefs have trod that path 
because of their fathers unhuman pride. . . 

“Be silent!” he roared. 

“It is the truth! It hurts, Heaven-Born, eh?” 
she went on, triumphantly. “Too proud to mix 
your seed with the seed of decent people—be¬ 
cause they be not of the lineage! But not too 
proud to let the seed of a hundred foul, lust- 
spotted strangers enter your daughter’s blood— 
for the sake of a couple of silver douros—for 
the sake of food and drink—for the sake of 
despair! Wah! You have been in the city of 


40 


SHACKLED 


Tunis in your youth. You have visited—doubt¬ 
less, for you are a man—the houses in the street 
of Sidi-ben-Naim. . . 

“Be silent!” he commanded again, with a cry 
like a hurt animal’s. 

Then his voice sank to a moaning, broken 
whisper: 

“Allah—Allah . . ” 

He sat down. He felt an immense lassitude 
in every limb. 


* * * * 

The street of Sidi-ben-Naim. 

The odor of death. The odor of decay. The 
odor of sweat. The odor of lust. 

Yes. He knew it. . . . 

* * * * 

He remembered the women there, with their 
unveiled faces and their shameless manners: 
Tunisians with loose, balloon-like trousers in 
light colors and embroidered djebbas; desert 
Bedawins of the Ouled Nayil tribe covered with 
barbarous, sand molded silver jewelry and robed 
in silken meleh’fahs; negresses from beyond 


SHACKLED 


41 


Timbuktoo with flat, tattooed noses and fore¬ 
heads, and immense copper or ivory discs in¬ 
serted in their lower lips; Moroccan Jewesses, 
huge, quivering, dead-white mountains of flesh, 
desired by either very old or very young men; 
a sprinkling of European women, French and 
English and Spanish and Italian; and, occa¬ 
sionally, a girl of the Shareefs, of the Prophet’s 
blood and seed. 

Walking up and down. Or sitting on nar¬ 
row benches in front of their houses, with their 
hands on their knees. Waiting for the buyers 
like cattle at a fair. 

Grandmothers, more than a few. Even 
great-grandmothers. Mothers, many; with 
their little daughters sitting on the same 
bench with them, already familiar with men’s 
passions. 

None too old. None too young. 

Behind them, the brutish, yellow flare of petrol 
lights showing huddled, rickety stairs; showing 
rooms with narrow beds and, always, a great 
French mirror wardrobe. 

There were no doors. Doors were not needed. 
These houses were always open. 

Just curtains. And the noises behind the cur¬ 
tains. 


42 SHACKLED 

Scents; lascivious; coiling; strong as the beat 
of a drum. 

The street of Sidi-ben-Naim. 

The odor of shame . . . 

* * * * 

He remembered one woman there in partic¬ 
ular. 

She had passed him one night with the cling- 
clong of her silver anklets and the stiff rustle of 
her brilliantly striped foutah. 

He had followed her; had spoken to her. He 
had wondered at her pure Arabic, her exquisite 
manners, her grey, frank eyes, her tiny, henna- 
stained hands. 

Then, in her tawdry room, with the silly Swiss 
clock and the gilt chair and the immense French 
mirror wardrobe, she had told him, after her 
seventh hasheesh pipe, of her home; of her 
father. 

Vague tales, yet true tales, he had felt in¬ 
stinctively. East of Marakesh she had lived, 
near the Demnat caravan trail, and her father 
had been a powerful chief over the tribes of 
Flitta and Mentarba and Sqemra and Izzein. 
Then the French had invaded and conquered the 


SHACKLED 


43 


country, and her father had been irreconcilable 
to foreign, Christian rule. Proud he had been 
with the bitter, self-hurting pride of his Sha- 
reefian race. 

And here, in the street of Sidi-ben-Naim, had 
been his daughter, his only child. 

* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani remembered her name: 
Zeina. 

He remembered her sitting cross-legged on 
the divan, with staring eyes, half impudent and 
half pathetic, sipping thick, musk flavored cof¬ 
fee drop by drop, and eating large, mauve 
colored radishes. 

He remembered how, after her eleventh hash¬ 
eesh pipe, she had cursed her father’s memory, 
with strange curses learned doubtless from some 
passing dervish: 

“Cursed be his bones, his pride, his soul, his 
blood! By the face of Abraham! By the 
light of the Prophet! By the war cry of 
Mohammed! By the secret of Abdul Khadr 
Ghilani! By the horns of the Archangel Ishra- 
feel—cursed be he, my father! By the symbol¬ 
ism of Kamber! By the altar and the pulpit! 


44 


SHACKLED 


By the flame and the mace and the sword! By 
the breath of the three, the five, the seven, and 
the forty-seven True Saints—cursed be he, my 
father!” 

Mustaffa Madani shuddered at the recollec¬ 
tion: 

“Cursed be he, my father!” 

The words repeated themselves in his thoughts. 

They expanded and multiplied. 

They were in his veins. They were in his 
bones. They were in the roots of his hair. 

They seemed to fill every nook and cranny of 
his brain: 

“Cursed be he, my father!” 

He looked up. He shivered as if an ague. 
A deep-throated sob shook his massive frame. 

He rose and crossed the roof-top, walking 
with a heavy step. It was dark now; and he 
stumbled. He bumped against a frail Cairene 
chair and kicked it furiously, swearing under his 
breath. The chair fell, breaking its back with 
a dull thud. The sound awakened the rage of 
destruction in his breast. He lifted his heavy- 
thewed arms, clenched his fists and brought them 
down with all their primitive, hacking strength, 
on a taboret covered with coffee cups and 
glasses. 


SHACKLED 


45 


Crash — crash—crash . . . 

The noise of the splintering, bursting glass 
and porcelain cracked through the stillness of 
the night with the steely viciousness of an auto¬ 
matic pistol. 

Blood squirted from his fingers. Blood 
stained his robe. But he did not notice it. 
Again he raised his fists, to complete the work 
of destruction, when his daughter’s voice came 
from her room, directly beneath the roof-top, 
drifting up the stairs. 

“What—what is the matter?” she asked sleep¬ 
ily, a little crossly. 

He controlled himself. 

“Nothing, nothing. I upset the taboret. Go 
back to sleep, Gouthia. Sweet dreams!” 

He walked to the stairs; called down softly: 

“Do you love me, small thing?” 

“With all my heart, father!” 

“May the Lord God bless you! May the 
All-Merciful not let you see the evil!” 

He waited, head on one side, silent, for 
several minutes, until he could hear once more 
her regular breathing. 

Then he walked away from the head of the 
stairs. 

He was a little less nervous. He said to him- 


46 SHACKLED 

self that he had been frightened by phantoms, 
just silly, unreal phantoms. 

Why—he loved his daughter; loved her with 
all the tenderness—a harsh tenderness at times 
—with which he had loved her mother, dead 
these many years. 

He would let no harm come to her. Dearer 
she was to him than his life. His life. And, 
with the word, with the thought, came a second 
thought, hard, logical, inexorable. His life. 
Yes. But after his life—what? Perhaps el- 
Fosiha was right. For how was Gouthia going 
to live? 

He loved her. True. But would his love be 
buckler and lance and scimitar to her after he 
had died? Would his love protect her against 
the sendings of Fate, the black camel rider? 

Once more he seemed to hear the other girl’s 
voice echoing to his remembrance: 

“Cursed be he, my father!” 

One of those pitilessly just curses, he said to 
himself, that close one life, resume another. 

* * * * 

Formerly he had always possessed the faculty 
of forgetting whatever had embarrassed or 


SHACKLED 


47 


humiliated him. It was as though his memory, 
like a strong, healthy stomach, rejected such 
nourishment before assimilating ii or letting it 
poison his system. 

But he could not today. 

That girl—in the street of Sidi-ben-Naim . . . 
his own daughter. . . . 

It was like a foreboding; a premonition. 

Nothing supernatural about it; nothing queer; 
nothing even prophetic in the accepted sense. 

For a foreboding is, after all, not a seeing 
into the future but a seeing into the past when, 
intentionally or unintentionally, one did or left 
undone a certain deed, spoke or left unspoken a 
certain word, living on without giving a thought 
to it. Yet, in some secret place of its own, this 
deed, done or left undone, this word, spoken or 
left unspoken, carries on its existence, its reac¬ 
tions, its eventual consequences doubly powerful 
and vital because scotched; it leaves traces on 
the subconscious mind though the conscious has 
forgotten it until, little by little or suddenly, the 
subconscious bores through the conscious, pops 
to the surface, cracking it with broad fissures and 
subtle holes. And at that moment—like a sick 
man who becomes aware of a tumor that has been 
forming in his brain or his intestines—one feels 


48 


SHACKLED 


all at once uneasiness, anxiety, nervousness, a 
certain regret, perhaps a certain fear—because 
the events resulting from the forgotten deed, 
done or left undone, the forgotten word, spoken 
or left unspoken, are on the verge of fulfillment 
while already the infallible instinct has drawn 
the consequences without registering the evolu¬ 
tion or even the plausibility. 

Foreboding. A joint development of facts of 
the past and gropings, imaginings into the future. 

The girl of the street of Sidi-ben-Naim. 
There was the fact. His own daughter. There 
was the groping, the imagining—an imagining 
doubly painful since Mustaffa Madani was the 
sort of father to whom the thought of a man near 
his daughter provoked real physical jealousy. 

Very suddenly he made up his mind. 

He turned to the negress. 

She had squatted down, a shapeless, black 
mass beneath the black vaulting of the night, 
only her rolling eyeballs giving a flash of white. 

“Bring me my woolen burnoose,” he said 
composedly. 

“You are going out?” 

“Yes.” 

She jumped up. 

“Where are you going?” she asked. 


SHACKLED 


49 


“To ask advice.” 

“About.. . . ?” 

“Gouthia.” He smiled gently. “I love you 
well, faithful old slave.” 

He bent and kissed her black, wrinkled face. 

She salaamed deeply. 

“On you the salute, 0 my master! I did not 
mean to drive the iron into your soul when I 
spoke. . . .” 

“Your words were just and true,” he in¬ 
terrupted. 

“Then—then you have changed your mind— 
you are going to seek a husband for . . .” 

“No!” 

“No?” 

“There is none of the lineage in el-Korma. 
I shall not sully the blood of my race. But I 
shall look for another path out of the mire. I 
am going to consult the sheykh Abubekr Sabri.” 

“A wise man, Heaven-Bom. But—” she con¬ 
tinued stubbornly—“marriage would yet be 
wiser. It is because of marriage that Allah 
gave strength to the man and soft breasts to the 
woman.” 

“And it is because of blabbing that Allah gave 
to old women loose lips and leaky tongues,” he 
rejoined with a return to hi6 old good-humor. 


50 


SHACKLED 


“There will be another path out of the mire. I 
shall see the sheykh. Give me my burnoose. 
It is late.” 

“But . . .” 

“My burnoose!” His voice rose slightly. 

“Listen is obey, 0 my master.” 

* * * * 

She brought the burnoose. He threw it across 
his shoulders, left the house, and stepped out 
into the night, while el-Fosiha went to the bed¬ 
room which she shared with Gouthia. 

She looked at the sleeping girl; and prayers 
came to her lips: 

“By the night when she spreadeth her veil! 
By the day when it is manifested! By what 
made the male and the female, I beseech Thee, 
0 Allah, protect Thou this girl! Praise be to 
Thee, the Lord of the Seven Worlds, the Com¬ 
passionate, the Merciful! Thee I worship, and 
Thee I ask for help! Thou art God the Eternal! 
I beseech Thee—protect Thou this girl, the 
apple of my eye!” 

Gouthia stirred in her sleep. 

She opened her eyes, saw the old negress 


SHACKLED 


51 


standing above her, smiled, and was about to 
drop back to sleep again when, as earlier during 
the evening, a throaty, falsetto love song brushed 
through the purple stillness of the night and 
quivered up to the stars’ gold: 

“ Beshooi , beshooi , yah hoebbi! 

Hammah ennass issemoo bina! 

Al esstook enndaff. . . .” 

* * * * 


Gouthia sat up. 

“El-Fosiha!” she whispered. 

“Yes—?” 

“You have been young—?” 

“Assuredly.” 

“You have loved—and been loved?” 

“Indeed, child!” A melancholy smile spread 
over the wrinkled, black face; endowed it, 
strangely, with a fleeting suggestion of beauty. 

“Tell me about it—” said Gouthia—“tell 
me. . . .” 

“I have told you often, child.” 

“Tell me again.” 

“But—it is late. . . .” 

“Please, please!” 


52 


SHACKLED 


“I shall tell you tomorrow.” 

“No. Tonight. Now. Please, please, 
please. . . .” 

El-Fosiha sighed. She sat down on the edge 
of the bed, and took the girl into her arms. 

“Listen, soul of my soul!” she began. “It 
was before I left the south, the Sahara, before I 
embraced Islam—when I still worshiped wooden 
idols and the blood spilled in Voodoo—when I 
was still a heathen—cursed be all unbelievers! 
Black he was and young and very tall and as 
handsome as the moon on the fourteenth day. 
He was of the tribe of the Ashantis, strong and a 
warrior, a crusher of stones, a killer of lions, a 
twirler of steel. And around his head—for he 
was a chief’s son—he wore a circlet of great 
ostrich feathers. Hayah —how the feathers 
rushed and rushed, like trees in the meeting of 
winds, when he bent over and kissed me . . . 
hayah , hayah !—when he kissed me—with his 
youth and his strength and the red, red passion 
of his lips. . . .” 

And she rambled on while Gouthia listened 
with dreamy, starry eyes. 


SHACKLED 


53 


In the meantime Mustaffa Madani, who had 
rapidly crossed el-Korma, was plunging into a 
net work of narrow streets where the poor and 
unwashed of all Africa’s motley races seemed to 
dwell together in amity and evil odors. 

They were mostly negroes. Blacks of all 
blacks. Of a dozen different races, like a tribal 
chart from the Great Lakes to the miasma of the 
Bight of Benin, yet the majority were flat-noses 
and splay-lips of the West Coast—Argungus, 
Awoonahs, Jakris, Yorubas, and Aquamoos. 
For once, during the rule of the Beys of Tunis 
and before the French had annexed the land, el- 
Korma had been one of the main African slave 
marts, and the freed descendants, converted to 
a semblance of Islam and boasting Moslem 
names, continued to live and breed here. 

But there was also a sprinkling of white men, 
Arabs and Europeans and Jews, men who had 
gone down the ladder of racial dishonor and civic 
disgrace until they had taken the final, irrevo¬ 
cable, unforgivable step: had gone fantee; had 
become black in speech and gesture and supersti¬ 
tion and mating and vice and smell and mode of 
thought; had crossed beyond the pale—outcasts 
forever to their kith and kin. 


54 


SHACKLED 


In spite of the late hour the African quarter, 
which never ceases chattering and bickering, was 
still up and about. From open air kitchens the 
sound of frying escaped and the reek of sizzling 
fat, with the men squatting on their haunches, 
chewing and smoking and spitting and laughing. 
The women were mostly upbraiding their hus¬ 
bands and their offspring in high, shrill voices, 
while children of all ages and all degrees of 
nudity played and screamed about the filthy 
streets. 

Puddles everywhere. Festering heaps of re¬ 
fuse, offal, excreta of humans and animals. 

There were no doors. At least no doors that 
closed. Doors here had no official function. 

For life was all in the open, shameless, un¬ 
trammeled, savagely free. 

And over it all a heavy scent, a mingling of 
sweat and musk, acrid, stagnant. 

* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani cut straight through the 
crowd, as a knife cuts through cheese. 

He shuddered slightly; thought of el-Fosiha’s 
warning as he passed a dive in front of which, 
their heads crowned with flowers, their slim 


SHACKLED 


55 


bodies clothed in loose blouses of purple silk and 
baggy, red trousers, sat three young half-breed 
girls—for sale fully as much as were the 
bunches of bananas and the fiery-colored veg¬ 
etables in the booth next door. 

* * * * 

A glimpse of another house. A cracked 
window. A brutish flare of light. A room on 
the level with the street. One man in there. 
Two women. One of the women was Arab, the 
other European. The man was an enormous, 
plum-colored, swag-bellied Saharan negro. 
Half his face was eaten away by a grey, filmy, 
leprous growth. 

He was roaring a song with the full power of 
his lungs, an arm around each woman: 

“If you want breasts, 

White breasts, 

Come to the house, 

The house of Fathma Ullal. . . .” 

It was the catch-song of the hour. All the 
bazaars of el-Korma were humming it. 

“Fathma Ullal.” Mustaffa Madani knew the 
name. She was a fat old Moroccan Jewess who 


56 SHACKLED 

dealt in pitiful wares—living wares—black and 
white and brown. . . . 

“If you want hips, 

Slim hips, 

Come to the house, 

The house of Fathma Ullal. . . 

* * * * 

One of the women came out on the street. 

“Fifi Dagdag —Fifi the Trembler,” they called 
her in el-Korma. A Frenchwoman trembling 
presumably through over-indulgence in hasheesh, 
there was gossip that she was the daughter of a 
former general in the French army who, ruined 
by gambling, had killed himself. 

She clutched Mustaffa Madani’s burnoose as 
he passed. She took up the negro’s song with a 
belching, hiccoughy voice: 

“If you want breasts, 

White breasts. . . .” 

He brushed her aside, disgusted, impatient. 

Life—he thought—it was vice, it was filth; 
for the poor, the helpless. 

‘Dog! Dog! Dog!” Fifii shouted after 
him, in her metallic, highly accented Arabic. 


SHACKLED 57 

“May God rip up your belly! Ah—your 
daughter’s nakedness for you!” 

* * * * 

He turned the corner. 

The crowds changed. More Arabs here. 

Here and there somebody recognized him and 
salaamed: 

“The salute, Sidi!” 

He paid no attention; hardly heard. He was 
in a despondent mood. His thoughts were bit¬ 
ter. His life seemed to him like his house: with 
the floor rotting under his feet, the walls sagging 
and threatening to tumble about his ears, the 
gates unhinged, the garden choked with weeds. 
Sterile, useless, pathetic, drab, it seemed to sym¬ 
bolize the decay that had come to him and his 
lineage. 

And there was Gouthia. There was the old 
negress’ warning . . . “the house in the street 
of Sidi-ben-Naim . . .” aye—the houses, here, 
in the coiling back alleys of el-Korma . . . and 
he was not cast in the mold of those who can 
think independently of their habits and prej¬ 
udices, who can take Fate by the throat and 
force it to disgorge. 


58 SHACKLED 

“What can I do . . . ?” He wondered 
dully. “What can I do?” 

His path was the path of his ancestors, straight 
and right as he saw it straight and right. It 
seemed unfair, unreasonable, even immoral to 
ask him to leave this path. 

He shrugged his shoulders with ungraceful 
resignation. He would consult the sheikh Abu- 
bekr Sabri, a wise man, the chief of the Mola- 
wees, the whirling dervishes, and his best friend 
—Allah! Allah!—his only friend. 

And it was characteristic of the man that once 
he had made up his mind he had acted im¬ 
mediately, without further deliberation, that he 
had not waited for the morning to call on the 
other. 

* * * * 

He turned south at the Bazaar of the Mutton- 
Butchers and walked through alleys that grew 
steadily more narrow and crooked, with a 
glimpse of smoky, discouraged sky above, the 
roof-tops revealing scarcely three yards of 
breadth, the roadway ankle deep in squidgy, 
sticky blue slime, beggars and lepers and roughs 
slinking past and pushing against him, until 
finally he found himself in the street of the Der- 


SHACKLED 


59 


vishes, a long cul-de-sac that ran the gamut of 
white-washed walls, broken here and there by 
tiny doors. 

Sounds drifted through, the buzzing and zum- 
ming of voices, the staccato thumping of drums, 
the shrilling of reed pipes, and hysterical, 
isolated shouts: 

“Allah Akbar!” 

“W'ellah!" 

“Ah b’illah!”, 

as, inside, the dervishes celebrated their queer, 
esoteric rites, whirling and chanting and shriek¬ 
ing their mystic, cosmic prayers to the Most 
High God. 

Mustaffa Mandani stopped at the fifth door, 
raised the bronze knocker, dropped it. 

Not long afterwards a novice opened and 
ushered him into a small, modestly furnished 
room where, a minute later, sheykh Abubekr 
Sabri joined him, salaaming with two fingers 
touching forehead, lips, and heart: 

“The salute, Sidi!” 

“The salute, Sabri effendi!” 

“A late visitor, but always welcome, Sidi!” 

* * * * 

Abubekr Sabri was a tall, lean, middle-aged 


60 


SHACKLED 


man, with a thin, clean shaven, ascetic face. He 
was dressed in the ceremonial costume of the 
Molawee dervishes. On his head was a huge, 
conical cap of brown felt, with a dark blue cloth 
twisted about its base, and he wore a long, 
black cloak that half hid a tightly fitting, white 
jacket and a voluminous, pleated, balloon-like 
skirt of the same color, very full over the hips. 
When he moved this skirt bloated and twisted, 
like that of an old-fashioned ballerina. 

He was a Turk of pure Osmanli stock who, 
though belonging to a military family, had been 
sent by his father to England and the Continent 
for school and university education. There, at 
first, the machine-made, machine-making civiliza¬ 
tion of the Occident had overwhelmed him, and 
so he had plucked with both fists at the tree of 
western wisdom; had steeped himself in 
European literature, philosophy, history, polit¬ 
ical principles, and cultural ideals; had deposed 
the God and Prophet and code of his ancestors 
and set up in their niches a number of brand- 
new, neat little idols labeled John Stuart Mill, 
Topinard, French Revolution, Lombroso, An¬ 
cient Greece, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin 
Franklin, Aryans, Nietzsche, Anti-Semitism, 
Herbert Spencer, Kropotkine, Karl Marx et 


SHACKLED 


61 


alias . . . really an amazing mental hash . . . 
but then most young Orientals are inclined to be 
rather catholic in their tastes on their initial 
appearance in the European halls of learning. 

Then, suddenly, almost overnight—and here 
again he was like most young Orientals abroad 
—revulsion had come to him; atavistic racial 
and religious recoil; complete and deliberate re¬ 
version to cultural type; systematic repercussion 
of soul and brain. 

Reflux. Rebound. 

Why? 

A moot point. 

He himself had forgotten the reason. Per¬ 
haps a slight argument about Orient and Oc¬ 
cident that had grown heated and acrimonious. 
Perhaps a friend’s patronizing remark. A 
woman’s laugh. A slurring word overheard. 

Or a mere jest? 

Reason, trifling or grave. Whatever reason. 
No matter. There had been the result. 

Revulsion. 

And at the precise moment of revulsion he 
had crystallized in his heart all the hatred and 
contempt and disgust which Orient and Occident 
have felt for each other since, with Prot¬ 
estantism and Reformation, came intolerance 


62 


SHACKLED 


and shoddy hypocrisy. Suddenly, deep in his 
sodden soul, had throbbed the old racial and 
cultural mistrust, with dull, muffled pulsings, 
with the shadows of creeping, unspeakable 
thoughts bursting up from the abyss of dead 
things. 

He had remained in Europe a year or two 
longer. 

For two reasons: to learn how to hate what 
formerly in the west he had admired and loved; 
and to master certain purely mechanical devices 
and systems of spreading knowledge which he 
might take back to his own people. 

During the second period of his stay, he had 
discovered one of two things. 

He had discovered that it is a titanic, heart¬ 
breaking task to prove the untruth or absurdity 
of anything which the Christians have made up 
their minds to accept as true or wise. He had 
found—the moment he declared himself an 
Oriental and an equal—an iron phalanx of 
preconceived opinions and misread lessons of 
history. He had learned that the two main 
characteristics of the Aryans are a Pharisee in¬ 
tolerance and an unconscious generalization of 
those ideas which have been adopted for the sake 
of convenience, profit, or self-flattery. 


SHACKLED 


63 


“The whole fabric of Christian civilization I 
found tainted with that low, rather ritualistic 
form of hypocrisy which makes a man pretend 
for his own spiritual or material purposes that 
a thing is good which in his inmost heart he 
knows to be bad. Nations as well as individuals 
are judged by two factors: by their virtues and 
by their vices. As to virtues, what have the 
Christian done for the general uplift of the 
world which cannot be matched by a random look 
into the pages of Oriental history? And as to 
vices, is there any degeneracy rampant amongst 
us which is not equalled by the degeneracy of 
the western lands?" 

These last lines are a quotation from his Ph. 
D. thesis at the University of Berlin. 

Needless to say, he had not passed the ex¬ 
amination, but had gone to Cairo where he had 
studied Islamic theology at al-Azar university, 
and had become first an itinerant Moslem priest, 
and finally a Molawee dervish. 

* * * * 

He lived now here, in the heart of el-Korma’s 
African quarter, where he preached the lessons 
of the Koran, taught the mystic pomp and ritual 


64 


SHACKLED 


of his Lodge to chosen initiates, and helped the 
poor and diseased with a free hand—he was a 
wealthy man—and a tolerant mind. 

His was a peculiar trick of spreading a sort 
of hush about him whenever he willed, of putting 
a volume of tranquil assurance into the faint, 
thin smile of his lips; and almost at once, as 
often in the past, Mustaffa Madani came under 
his friend’s potent spell, and when the latter re¬ 
peated that this, though a welcome, was a late 
visit, and that “there must be a reason, Sidi” and 
“you look worried, Sidi,” he told him, already 
in a slightly less vexed frame of mind. 

“So I came to you for advice, Sabri effendi,” 
he wound up. 

The other was silent for a while. But, like 
the desert, like the vaulting of a clear, tight, 
blue summer sky, he seemed endowed with a 
great repose that penetrated his own and Mus¬ 
taffa Madani’s soul with a profound and quiet¬ 
ing influence. Behind the taciturnity of the 
sheykh the young novice, who had let Mustaffa 
Madani in and who had not left the room, hov¬ 
ered without noise. 

He coughed now, suddenly, rather nervously; 
and Mustaffa Madani, who had not been aware 
of his presence near the door in the coiling, 


SHACKLED 


65 

trooping shadows, looked up, saw him, seemed 
annoyed, and pointed arrogantly. 

“Sabri effendi,” he said, “this matter is be¬ 
tween you and me.” 

The dervish smiled. 

“Hassan is my beloved pupil, Sidi,” he re¬ 
plied. “He is the apple of my eye and the soul 
of my soul. I have no secrets from him. No, 
no!” as Hassan turned to go. “Stay here, my 
son!” 

“But—” objected Mustaffa Madani—“I do 
not wish to-” 

“A Shareef, are you?” interrupted Abubekr 
Sabri with a jest that was half steel. “And I, 
though a dervish, am an Osmanli, an Amurath! 
Hassan will remain. I am lost without my 
Hassan.” 

“Very well,” grumbled Mustaffa Madani, 
while Hassan blushed. 

* * * * 


Hassan was young, not over twenty-five years 
of age. He was pale, and appeared ludicrously 
small and lean in his voluminous dervish cos¬ 
tume. His head seemed too large for his 
bunched, rounded shoulders, too large for his 



66 


SHACKLED 


thin neck. His only redeeming features were 
his nose, short, straight, high-bridged, and his 
grey, gold-flecked eyes. 

These eyes, strangely, were resolute, fear¬ 
less, entirely out of keeping with the rest of 
the man. 

They were eyes of the desert, the soil, the 
clay. 


* * * * 

“Hassan,” continued the sheykh, 6 ‘is my 
pride. . . .” 

“A relative?” asked Mustaffa Madani, cas¬ 
ually. 

“No—” laughed the other—“he was . . 

“A bit of Saharan desert flotsam!” interrupted 
Hassan. “An orphan without father or mother! 
You—” he bowed and kissed the sheykh’s hand 
which, after the proper Moslem manner, was 
rapidly snatched away—“have been father and 
mother to me. “Ah—” in quaint, archaic Bed- 
awin parlance—“the Lord grant you increase of 
great cattle!” 

“Hm . . .” Mustaffa Madini yawned rudely. 

A shade of annoyance flitted across his face. 
Talk of this sort was painfully out of focus with 


SHACKLED 


67 


his ideas and standards. Let a desert rat re¬ 
main a desert rat, and a gentleman, a gentleman, 
was his creed. 

“Interesting—doubtless—” he went on, iron¬ 
ically. “But—what about the advice that I 
came to ask you, Sabri effendi?” 

“Advice—?” smiled the other. “And what 
then can I tell you, Sidi?” 

“You are a wise and godly man. There must 
be a path out of the mire to the seeing of your 
eyes.” 

“To find a path out of the mire without soil¬ 
ing one’s slippers is scarcer than the nose of a 
lion. You cannot take without giving.” 

“I am not trying to take—anything.” 

“To remain as you do, unchanging, unchange¬ 
able, and to ask the ever-changing world to con¬ 
form with you and your stony prejudices, is 
that not trying to take—everything? Your old 
servant is right. . . .” 

“Are you, too, a match-maker?” came Mus- 
taffa Madani’s gruff rejoinder. 

“No, no!” disclaimed the other. 

He went on seriously: 

“The world changes and moves. Everything 
changes and moves. So must you.” 

“I do not like it.” 


68 


SHACKLED 


“Will your likes and dislikes influence the 
law of God, the law of nature?” 

“Words?” 

“No, Sidi! A fact!” 

“Fact? Pah! But another word—another 
empty, tinkly, silly sound!” 

“Which I shall prove to you, Sidi!” The 
sheykh rose. “God alone is changeless. 
Everything else forever changes and moves and 
gyrates—rhythmically. Come.” 

* * * * 

He took his friend by the hand and, followed 
by Hassan, took him into the tekke, the Lodge 
itself of the Molawee dervishes, where the latter 
were attending to their nightly, esoteric ritual. 

There, with the oil lamps weaving fantastic, 
heliotrope shadows and a great incense burner 
sending up spirals and clouds of scented smoke 
and the music of drums and reed pipes droning 
in a melancholy, minor key, then suddenly peak¬ 
ing up into a shriek, again dying away in trem¬ 
bling cadences, the Molawees were whirling 
giddily around and around, looking like gigantic 
tops with their tall, conical hats and their 
balloon-like skirts spinning in wide, circular 


SHACKLED 


69 


motions. They swayed and whirled, swayed 
and whirled, swayed and whirled, their eyes 
glassy, their faces tense and ecstatic, each man 
with a hand on his neighbor’s shoulder, linked 
together in a flexible chain—and as Mustaffa 
Madani stared minute after minute, first cynic¬ 
ally amused, then fascinated, then with a certain 
superstitious fear in his heart, it seemed to him 
as if, gradually, the lamps, the floor, the whole 
room, and he himself, his own brain and soul, 
were joining in the dance, were whirling away to 
the swing of the music in a great rhythm—and 
there was in his ear the sheykh’s voice, whisper¬ 
ing softly and subtly: 

‘‘Everything forever moves and whirls, thus 
breathes and lives, through the strength of the 
faith. A deed, a gesture, a motion, is a better 
prayer than a word, Sidi. See—we Molawees 
move and whirl as moves and whirls the earth, 
the constellations, all creation, around Allah’s 
never-ending unity. And you—a Shareef, a de¬ 
scendant of the Prophet—on Him peace and the 
blessings-? Doubtless. But are you be¬ 

yond the eternal law? Can you refuse to move 
and whirl—rhythmically, cosmically? Can you 
refuse to change? Look, Sidi!” he exclaimed 
as the devotees jerked away in a great, smooth 



70 SHACKLED 

wind, like enormous white bells spinning monot¬ 
onously. 


* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani felt strangely affected. 

The incense dried his mouth. It bulged his 
eyes. The music droned in his brain. 

A spasm of excitement ran through his body 
from head to toe; seemed to electrify him. 

It was partly fear; partly an incredible, trem¬ 
bling elation; yet sensuous straight through; a 
stiffening and bloating of every sexual reaction 
in his body. 

A yell rose in his contracted throat. 

His legs and arms began to twitch, then to 
move in rhythmic gyrations, while all the time 
the hard, fact-sober cells of his tough brain ob¬ 
served these reactions as if they were those of 
an alien body, disapproving of them, ridicul¬ 
ing them, endeavoring to restrain them . . . 
trying to put back his feet on the solid, clayey 
earth of his knowing; to scuttle back his emo¬ 
tions to their safe, accustomed grooves; to jerk 
back his mind to that stagnation which he mis¬ 
took for balance. But the instinct was stronger 
than the will. Life was no longer a stationary 


SHACKLED 


71 


fact. It was mutation. It was rhythm. It was 
alterative mood. It was a spiral mounting and 
rising and swinging. It was a symbolic image 
with wings. It was perfect, unceasing motion 
reaching up to perfect, unceasing knowledge. 

He was about to leap into the centre of the 
tekke and to join in the dervish dance when 
Abubekr Sabri, who had been watching him 
closely, put a hand on his arm and broke the 
spell. 

“Come!” he said. 

Followed by Hassan he led him back into the 
small room. 

“You have understood?” he asked. 

“I have understood—a little—” replied Mus- 
taffa Madani, musingly—“yes—a little. . . 

* * * * 

Perhaps it was the inflection of his own voice, 
the tremulous, nervous accent so strange to his 
character: but, suddenly, with almost physical 
violence, he found himself wrenched back into 
the world as he lived and interpreted it. 

“And yet . . .” he added. 


* * * * 


72 


SHACKLED 


He spoke just those two words: 

“And yet . . ” 

Spoke them in a flat, brittle voice. 

Mockingly spread a high-veined hand. 
Stared straight, challengingly, defiantly, at 
Abubekr Sabri. 


* * * * 

The latter laughed frankly; more at himself 
than at his friend. He told himself that he had 
underestimated Mustaffa Madani’s desert-bred 
obstinacy. 

“I shall not be able to make a dervish of you 
—not until the rust and grime of great grief 
will have purified your soul—you stubborn old 
mule!” he exclaimed. “Stubborn enough to 
hammer cold iron! Stubborn enough to fish for 
the moon reflected in water! Stubborn enough 
to talk Arabic in the house of a Berber!” 

Then, very gently, for he loved the hard- 
headed old aristocrat with an almost quixotic 
tenderness and saw his lips tightening into a 
thin, tense line, he added: 

“No, no. I am not trying to change you or 
your prejudices—at least not all your prejudices. 
“Nor—” he smiled—“am I a match-maker. If 


SHACKLED 


73 


you do not want your seed to continue—well 
and good. You are the father, the master. But 
even so—the world changes. Come. Admit 
it.” 

“Oh . . Mustaffa Madani was thoroughly 
himself again, relentless, wary, suspicious. 

99 

“Admit it!” insisted the sheykh. “There are 
no longer the days of the free desert, of the 
wind in your face and the crackle of steel in 
your ear, of food for the asking and gold for the 
taking and horses for the mating.” 

“True—cursed be the French—cursed be all 
foreigners, all Christians—who come into our 
lands, like robbers, like thieves in the night . . . 
pigs all and fathers of pigs—lying, avaricious, 
hypocritical, unclean!” 

“Cursed be they indeed! I bear them no 
love. I know them. I lived amongst them, in 
their own land. But I am not fool enough to 
put my hand between the bear and his fodder, 
unless my hand be gloved with steel. The 
Christians are here, strong and pitiless. We 
are here, weak and—yes—puling. The day will 
come—may Allah grant it be soon!—when 
we shall pour out their blood upon the edge of 
the red sword. But this day is not here yet. 


74 


SHACKLED 


In the meantime, rather endure the flatulencies 
of the camels than the prayers of the fishes, 
Sidi. Why fight the inevitable—before you are 
strong enough to change it? Consider your 
daughter. What will she do after your death?” 

“What indeed?” 

“You do not want her to marry?” 

“Never one who is not of the lineage.” 

“Nor do you want to make your peace with the 
French?” 

“Only a moment ago you said yourself 
that . . ” 

“That I do not love them, Sidi. Nor do I. 
But I am not a fool. The fingers which you 
cannot bite, kiss them and put them upon your 
head—until you be strong enough to bite them!” 

“Not I!” 

“Wah! You are like the bear, neither to be 
milked, led in the procession, nor ridden! 
Come. Be wise. Go to the French. Take 
them by the hand today—and you can take 
them by the throat tomorrow. Salaam to the 
wicked monkey—as long as he is in power. 
Later on you can cut off his tail, to clean out 
your nose with. Only the other day I talked 
with the governor-general. He mentioned your 
name, knowing that I am your friend. He is 


SHACKLED 


75 


still willing to appoint you to an honorable posi¬ 
tion—even to a lucrative position.” 

“And thereby stain my burnoose, and dis¬ 
honor my race and faith? No! Irish’allah 
mah teshoof es-shurr —may the Lord God not 
let us see the evil!” 

“A very holy sentiment—” said the sheykh, 
impatiently. “But I have been told that reli¬ 
gion is always on the lips of the liar and the 
courtezan—and the fool!” 

“If I am a fool, God made me one.” 

“Lucky for you. Otherwise there would be 
no forgiving you. And so after your death— 
may it be many years before you reach Paradise 
—Gouthia must earn her own living, since you 
are unwilling or unable to provide.” 

“Her—own living-?” 

“Yes.” 

“Oh . . ” 

Mustaffa Madani sat up straight. He had 
heard tales about Christian and Jewish women 
going out into the world’s coarse tumult, work¬ 
ing like men, competing with men for the sake 
of a gold coin. Tales exotic, incredible, ludi¬ 
crous, even barbarous to his interpretation of 
life’s essentials. 

But—his daughter—his own daughter . . . 



76 


SHACKLED 


“Earn her own living-?” he stammered. 

“She—a girl—a girl of the lineage. . . 

“Even a girl of the lineage must eat if she 
wishes to live—and beans cost money—even 
worm eaten beans.” 

“True!” agreed Mustaffa Madani dully, after 
a pause. 

“Good. But how is she going to do it?” con¬ 
tinued the sheykh. “How is she going to earn 
her own living? Do you know, Sidi?” 

“No, Sabri effendi.” 

“I do.” 

“Ah-?” 

“Yes.” 

“Tell me.” 

“There is just one way—just one path out of 
the mire of your stubborness.” 

“Namely?” 

“She must become a teacher, Sidi.” 

* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani’s thoughts whirled. 

He was utterly beyond his depths, seemed in 
a very quagmire of conditions and conceptions 
of life whose existence, heretofore, he had at 




SHACKLED 


77 


times vaguely dreamed of, had always vaguely 
ridiculed. 

“Teach-?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

“Teach—what? Teach—whom?” 

“I am not like you, Sidi. I change with the 
changing world. The French have schools. 
So have the Jews. And many Moslem children 
go to these schools—and what becomes of them? 
They forget their own race, their own faith, their 
own proud civilization and traditions. So, with 
the government’s permission, speaking honeyed 
words and not telling them altogether the truth 
in the back of my brain, I founded two schools, 
one for boys, the other for girls, where they 
learn modern things, yet in the spirit of our own 
race, not the foreigners’. We have enough 
teachers for the boys, men like Hassan and other 
young dervishes. But it is hard to find women 
teachers, for the girls. We have only one, a 
Syrian woman trained at an American college 
in Constantinople. We need more women 
teachers, Arabs, Moslems, like your daughter. 
But what does she know? She can press per¬ 
fume from flower petals. She can sing a little. 
She can embroider a little—I daresay. Charm- 



78 SHACKLED 

ing accomplishments, I grant you. But—worth¬ 
less.” 

“Worthless-?” 

“To us. We teach a certain amount of book 
knowledge and a great many practical things. 
Gouthia must acquire a foundation of both be¬ 
fore she can teach others. But who will teach 
her? I cannot spare the Syrian woman—she 
is busy all day. Therefore . . .” 

“Therefore-?” echoed the other, listlessly, 

half guessing what was coming. 

“A man must teach her.” 

* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani did not reply at once. 

He was shocked to the core of his Shareefian 
prejudices. But he knew that the sheykh was 
right in everything, that there was no other path 
out of the mire. 

A sob shook his massive frame. He opened 
and shut his hands convulsively. 

Abubekr Sabri watched him. He saw how 
the man’s pride was bleeding; pitied him pro¬ 
foundly. 

But he could not help him. It was fate. It 
was life. God-made. Thus just. 




SHACKLED 


79 

“I . . . I . . began Mustaffa Madani. 

His voice failed him. 

Perhaps for the first time in his life tears 
were in his eyes. And it was not easy for him 
to weep. Drop by drop the tears had to be 
forced out of that tough, unyielding soul, hurt¬ 
ing him almost physically. 

* * * * 

The sheykh took his friend’s cold hand. He 
raised it to his lips and kissed it. 

“You cannot do otherwise, Sidi,” he said. 
“It is a sending of fate.” 

“Yes. Fate—like a grey, slimy snake, press¬ 
ing out my life—my race—my pride . . .” 

All at once he flared into vehemence. 

“Allah curse the French, the foreigners, who 
brought this dishonor upon my house!” He 
lifted his hands in savage prayer to God. His 
eyes blazed. “Let their women be childless, 0 
Allah! Forgive not, 0 Allah, their trespasses! 
Destroy them utterly!” 

His words jumbled, choked. 

Then, just as suddenly, he controlled himself. 
He dropped his hands. He looked up, dry¬ 
eyed, hard-faced. 


80 


SHACKLED 


“I am helpless,” he said. “I submit.” 

And, with all the courtesy of his breed, sa¬ 
laaming deeply with clasped hands: 

“I am grateful to you, Sabri effendi. My 
gratitude is at your feet—a carpet.” 

Then, after a pause: 

“You will look for a teacher?” 

“I have already found one, Sidi.” 

“Whom?” 

“Hassan—the apple of my eye.” 

“You mean-” Mustaffa Madani pointed 

casually, arrogantly—“him-?” 

“Yes.” 

“Hm . . .” 

Mustaffa Madani stepped up to Hassan. He 
looked him up and down, his lips curling in a 
slow, thin smile. 

The younger man was embarrassed. He was 
even, somehow, afraid. For Mustaffa Madani 
was so big, and he himself was so weak, so puny. 
For a moment his face grew livid. But he did 
not give in to his nervousness. His resolute eyes 
met Mustaffa Madani’s unbridled eyes with an 
unflinching, slightly contemplative glance. 

“Yes,” he said. “I.” 

“Hm . . .” the other repeated the insolent 
monosyllable. “You—eh . . . ?” 




SHACKLED 


81 


“Nor,” continued Hassan, fear still in his 
heart, but the blood in his brain pulsing coldly, 
intelligently, “shall I become your daughter’s 
teacher because of any especial love or respect 
for you and your Shareefian clan.” 

“No-?” asked Mustaffa Madani, sardoni¬ 

cally. 

“No! I do it because the sheykh orders it.” 
* * * * 

Again Mustaffa Madani’s lips curled in a 
thin, slow smile. 

Then, suddenly, he burst into laughter; laugh¬ 
ter that dropped like a blight. 

“And,” he said, staring at the younger man, 
“for a few moments I was afraid. Afraid be¬ 
cause a man was to teach my daughter. Ho! 
There is no need yet in my house of eunuchs and 
bright sword to guard my honor and my daugh¬ 
ter’s virginity. Your face cuts off all danger.” 

He turned to the sheykh. 

“When will you send him?” he asked. 

* * * * 

Abubekr Sabri was looking at Hassan with a 
steady glance that begged and caressed and 



82 


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apologized. And Hassan, whose livid face was 
now streaked with red, shrugged his shoulders. 

“Tomorrow morning at eleven, Sidi,” replied 
the sheykh. 

“Again thanks, effendi,” said Mustaffa Ma- 
dani. 

He salaamed and left. 

* * * * 

It was very late. 

The African quarter was deserted except for, 
here and there, an isolated fragment of human 
life, a bit of desert flotsam tossed upon the stony 
waves of the street: a patriarchal old Bedawin 
squatting in a postern, a flickering oil lamp 
shadow-painting his bearded, hollow, austere 
cheeks, his beak of a nose, his opaque, hooded 
eyes—like a dark, bitter film of Scriptural 
memories; a black giant of Timbuktoo, drunk 
with hasheesh, belching a ribald bazaar song up 
to the moon’s elfin green miracle; a beggar in 
front of a mosque, half asleep, but still whining 
his eternal plaint: 

“Alms for the love of Allah. . . .” 

Mustaffa Madani skirted the edge of a cem- 


SHACKLED 


83 


etery where the graves dreamed with cluttered, 
brittle emblems; walked on beneath a vaulted 
sky, purple, silver dusted, and out on the des¬ 
ert’s rim a screen of palm trees leaning against 
the sky’s base with lanky, nostalgic arms; arrived 
at his house that reached out at him suddenly 
from the tangle of the hectic, encroaching 
bazaars; opened the gate as morning was be¬ 
ginning to boom on the horizon with a golden, 
staccato, wedge-like gesture. 

Very faintly, as he dropped off to sleep, he 
could hear an indistinct drone of voices from 
his daughter’s room. 

The old negress was still telling Gouthia the 
tale of her youth, and embroidering—good soul 
—its fabric with the tinselly glitter of imagined 
romance: 

‘There was also a man of the Iron Tribes, a 
wide-stepper in the councils of chiefs, a breaker 
of hearts, a twirler of spears, strong-armed, 
mighty-thewed, of lusty and impatient manhood. 
He fought for the sake of my love —hay ah! but 
my love was sweet and soft—fought for three 
days and four nights, and seven chiefs he killed 
single-handed and twenty-one chiefs’ sons and 
of warriors live score—may Allah shrivel my 


84 


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liver if I lie!” She smiled; caressed the girl’s 
cheeks. “Do you find pleasure in my love’s 
motley tale, soul of my soul?” 

Gouthia stared straight ahead. 

“A day that is not your own day, would you 
reckon it as of your own life?” she asked. “A 
kiss that is not your own kiss, would you reckon 
it of your own love . . . ?” 

* * * * 

Gouthia met Hassan the next day when her 
father introduced him with a few slurred, bitter 
words, leaving the room shortly afterwards. 
El-Fosiha was sitting on her heels in a corner, 
watching with her old bright eyes. 

She met him with undisguised hostility. She 
looked at his Arabic books with undisguised con¬ 
tempt. 

She, too, was of the Shareefs. She did not 
care for learning, for knowledge, the fruit of 
learning. She took no interest in it. She did 
not even respect it vicariously, in others. She 
desired none of it for herself. She resisted it 
instinctively as well as consciously. Learning, 
after all, is primarily the result of democratic 
thought, of democratic broadcasting. It is the 


SHACKLED 


85 


mob’s disorganizing brain pitted against the 
aristocracy’s organizing fist. It is the weapon 
of the masses in their fight with the classes. 

Gouthia did not know the word democracy nor 
its Arabic equivalent. But she felt it. And 
what she felt of it was to her essentially base 
and sinister and hideous, betraying its origin; a 
thing mulched and manured with mental sweat 
and cerebral dung; rather unclean. It was both 
subtlety and cleverness. Jews were subtle. 
Christians were clever. The former knew how 
to argue acutely; the latter how to analyze 
keenly. Both brought about a superfluity of 
material wants, and a prodigality of endeavors, 
to supply these wants. Wants as well as en¬ 
deavors were ugly; were not worthwhile. Both 
painted happiness on the outer, instead of the 
inner walls of their houses, their lives. Aris¬ 
tocrats created what they needed. Democracy 
needed what it created. 

To Gouthia’s inherited, medieval, aristocratic 
reasoning knowledge was a specialty of these 
Jews and Christians who had overrun the land 
like greedy, noisy locusts. It was a commodity, 
nothing else; a bazaar product; really rather 
contemptible. 

In former years, when the high-pooped 


86 


SHACKLED 


Tunisian and Algerian privateers had roamed the 
Mediterranean from Gibralter to the Golden 
Horn, her ancestors had occasionally captured 
Christian slaves who were wise in certain ways, 
with their brains or their hands; quite valuable; 
at times amusing, as monkeys are amusing, or 
trained parrots. They had used these white 
slaves as in the United States a planter had used 
a black slave; with decency; even generosity; 
even, in some cases, personal liking; but never 
with the proper respect of simple, human com¬ 
panionship. 

Cattle with brains. Cattle plodding through 
the furrows of learning, as oxen plod through 
the furrows of small-grained wheat. One 
ate wheat. One bought it in bags and boxes 
if one did not grow it. Thus one bought 
knowledge. 

Slave labor formerly. Today bazaar labor; 
bazaar barter. University. Schools. Both 
bazaars. Just bazaars. Mental piece-goods. 
Metaphysical cabbage. 

And here was this dervish, this contemptible 
huckster of contemptible learning—to teach 
her. . . . 

But—“it is fate, little daughter,” her father 
had said. “There is no other way. It seems 


SHACKLED 


87 


that you must stuff your small head with knowl¬ 
edge as el-Fosiha stuffs a cucumber.” 

And Mustaffa Madani had gone to his room 
to smoke his hasheesh pipe. 

It was his one vice; was becoming daily more 
so. He took refuge in the kindly, acrid, 
philosophic drug; blessed the Prophet because it 
was cheap. 

He smoked. 

Six pipes. Seven pipes. 

The noises of the outer world seemed far 
away. There was, after a while, just a memory 
of street cries lifting their hungry, starved 
arms; just a murmur of whispering desert wind 
chasing the morning clouds that clawed at the 
sun’s gold with cool, slim fingers of white and 
silver. 

Another murmur. So faint. From the next 
room. The drifting of Gouthia’s voice. . . . 

Little Gouthia. Learning. . . . 

A slow smile overspread his features He 
stared at the rolling hasheesh clouds. They 
seemed filled with a roaring sunset of colors, fox 
brown and steel blue and purple, like the colors 
of his past dreams moving and blazing before 
him, changing into his future dreams. . . . 

Little Gouthia . . . learning. . . . 


88 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

Through the meshes of her face veil Gouthia 
looked at her teacher, and the thought came to her 
that this was the ugliest young man whom she 
had ever seen. 

The thought, somehow, pleased her; subtly 
changed their mutual position of teacher and 
pupil in relative values, making him less and her 
more important; even—illogically—making him 
less objectionable. 

Her lips tightened. 

She had some of her father’s chilly ruthless¬ 
ness, overlaid by a strictly feminine desire to 
tease and ridicule. 

She took a seat cross-legged on a pillow. She 
pointed at another. 

“Sit down,” she said curtly. 

He obeyed. He put his books on a small 
taboret between them. 

“Your name is Hassan?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

“How came you by such a name?” 

“Why not, Bibi Gouthia?” 

“It is a fighter’s name—the name of the 
Prophet’s son—gloriously killed in battle— 
while you are . • 


SHACKLED 


89 


“Only a student, a dervish. I know.” 

He looked at her; saw her very young and 
slight; with a glint of russet gold in the stray 
locks that escaped from her head shawl, her eyes 
above the face veil brown and fearless and 
utterly candid. 

“I am sorry that you hate me, Bibi Gouthia,” 
he continued. 

“I cannot help it, Hassan. I do hate you.” 

“Why?” 

“Because!” 

“At least you are honest.” 

“Forgive me, Hassan. I must speak as I 
feel.” 

“And do you always speak as you feel?” 

Hassan smiled; and Gouthia had a fleeting 
impression that his smile was not altogether 
unpleasant. 

“Always!” she replied. 

Then, sharply, as she saw his lips twitch and 
quiver and heard a rumbling, incoherent sound 
bubbling from his lips, she exclaimed: 

“Hassan!” 

“What, Bibi Gouthia?” 

“You are laughing!” 

“Yes.” 

“Are you laughing at me?” 


90 


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“No.” 

“Why did you laugh?” 

“I—I didn’t.” 

“You did. I heard you. You said yourself 
that you did. Why do you lie?” 

“Oh . . ” 

“I never imagined that a dervish would lie!” 

“Oh—it was only a laugh of sympathy.” 

“I do not want your sympathy.” 

“Mutual sympathy, Bibi Gouthia,” he went 
on. “I feel for you because Fate forced me on 
you as a teacher. And I hope that you feel for 
me because Fate forced you on me as a pupil.” 

“You are rude, Hassan!” 

“Am I?” 

“Very rude! Do they not teach you manners 
in the tekke of the Molawee dervishes?” 

“I am not rude. Only honest. Just as you 
are honest!” 

“Ho! Ho!” came el-Fosiha’s voice from the 
corner. “An artful twister of words! By my 
honor!” 

The old negress broke into a paroxysm of jun¬ 
gle mirth. Hassan laughed aloud; and, as his 
eyes opened wide, Gouthia noticed that they 
were kindly eyes, deep, gold flecked, resolute. 

The very next moment she was conscious of 


SHACKLED 


91 


two distinct surprises. One was that she did not 
hate him at all; the other that for the first time in 
her life she was talking to a man, not to one of 
her father’s middle-aged acquaintances who 
occasionally came to the house and treated her 
like a little girl still taken up with dolls, nor to a 
shopkeeper in the bazaar, but to a young man, a 
strange man, and that she could talk to him quite 
easily, without embarrassment. 

She did not even mind her face veil. It did 
not seem a very formidable barrier to conversa¬ 
tion and sympathy. 

She looked at him again with her candid, 
searching glance. 

Yes. He was small and ugly. Very small. 
Very ugly. There was no doubt of it. 

Lines furrowed his forehead. His beard and 
eyebrows were too scanty. His lips were pale. 
A pimple reddened his left nostril. His ears 
were large. So were his feet, his hands. 

But then there were his eyes. Very nice eyes, 
she decided. And so open and steady. 

And his voice. It was soft and low. Rather 
attractive. Beguiling. 

Still—a huckster in mental piece-goods; a 
nobody! 

But—her father had explained the situation 


92 


SHACKLED 


to her; after his death she would have to earn 
her own living; would have to become a teacher. 
There was no other way. 

* * * * 


A teacher! 

Suddenly she, too, laughed. 

She had always dreamed of life beyond the 
walls, beyond the veil. 

A teacher—why—here was her chance. . . . 
* * * * 

“Hassan!” she said sternly. “We are wasting 
time. You are here to teach me things.” 

“Yes, Bibi Gouthia,” he replied. He opened 
a book. “Do you love poetry?” 

“Yes.” 

“I thought so.” 

“Why, Hassan?” 

“Because of your eyes.” 

“Oh. . . .” 

“Indeed.” He slurred; paused; went on: 
“Well—let us begin the first lesson with poetry.” 

He looked for a passage in the book; found it; 
read aloud, in a clear, soft voice: 


SHACKLED 


93 


“Our old moon put her horns away and the 
dark nights were three; 

There danced a girl-moon through the 
clouds , pallid as ivory. 

At break of day one green star went patrol- 
ing down the sky , 

Just as the lonely watchman with a lantern 
passing by. . . ” 

She clapped her hands. 

“Lovely!” she exclaimed. 

“Isn’t it?” 

“Who wrote it, Hassan?” 

“Ibn al-Motazz.” 

“Who was he?” 

“A poet of Bagdad of eleven hundred years 
ago, when Islam was at the height of her glory— 
under the rule of your ancestors. . . .” 

And so, smilingly, he began telling her of 
Bagdad’s great caliphs, of Arab history and arts 
and letters. 

When she wanted to know more, he passed 
the book over to her. 

“Here—” he said—“read for yourself, Bibi 
Gouthia.” 

“I cannot read.” 

She said it nonchalantly. She was not at all 
embarrassed or ashamed. 


94 


SHACKLED 


“Very shocking!” came his short comment. 

“Why?” 

“Because you are ignorant, quite ignorant.” 

“Bah!” she replied calmly. “I am of the 
Shareefs.” 

“No excuse for ignorance. Your own an¬ 
cestor, the Prophet Mohammed—on Him peace 
and the blessings!—could read and write.” 

“Could He?” 

“Of course. Did He not write the Koran?” 

“Oh—I suppose so—” admitted Gouthia. 

“And do you then despise the Prophet—on 
Him peace and the blessings!—because of it?” 

“Of course not.” 

“Then why not learn to read and write your¬ 
self?” 

“Oh. . . .” 

“You must!” 

“Must—” haughtily—“I?” 

“Yes,” he said. “If you wish to become a 
teacher. Come. It is not difficult.” 

He drew paper, pens, and a long dervish ink- 
stand from his waist shawl, and showed her the 
Arabic alphabet, slowly, patiently, letter for let¬ 
ter, making her memorize them, correcting her 
as, clumsily, diffidently, she tried to copy them. 

“It is not difficult,” he repeated. “Come. 


SHACKLED 


95 


Speak after me: ‘aleph — be—te — tse — gim — 
hha—kha — ? ” until gradually they reached the 
end of the alphabet: “ 'Mini — noon — ouaou — 
he — ie —’ ” He smiled. “There! Not hard, 
is it?” 

“On the contrary. Very hard. But I shall 
learn and succeed.” 

“Allah be blessed! There speaketh a Shar- 
eef! There speaketh one of the lineage!” 

Gravely he meant and spoke the compliment. 
Gravely she accepted it. 

“Shall I some day be able to read all books?” 
she asked. 

“I hope so,” he replied. “But the greatest 
books are not written with the alphabet, nor are 
they read with the eye. You cannot read them 
without a key.” 

“What key?” 

“The key of your own soul, Bibi Gouthia.” 

Again he smiled. Again she thought that he 
had nice eyes, deep, clear, resolute. 

He rose. 

“Shall I come at the same time tomorrow, 
Bibi Gouthia?” 

“Please. And—” she hesitated. 

“Yes-?” 

“I hate you no longer, Hassan.” 



96 SHACKLED 

“I am glad.” He bowed. “The salute, Bibi 
Gouthia!” 

“The salute, Hassan!” 

“The salute!” chimed in el-Fosiha, wakening 
from the light sleep of old age. 

* * * * 

Thereafter, six times a week, every day ex¬ 
cept Friday, the blessed day of rest for all things 
created, Gouthia sat on her pillow, facing Has¬ 
san and imbibing knowledge. 

As to knowledge, while she learned, she never 
liked nor respected it; found no satisfaction in 
her own progress. Perhaps, here and there, she 
enjoyed a poem or stray thought; or thrilled at a 
glancing back into the history of the Arab nation 
and Moslem faith both of which were so inalien¬ 
ably the history of her own Shareefian blood. 
But her reactions as to learning and knowledge 
never changed, not until the end of her life. 
While the horizon of her mentality lifted more 
and more, she did not feel the pleasure of 
it, the pleasure of greater, fuller life pouring in; 
did not feel, beneath the accumulated knowledge 
of others which she acquired slowly and ten¬ 
aciously, her own mind growing and stretching, 


SHACKLED 


97 


widening and deepening; nor if, subconsciously, 
it did grow and stretch, widen and deepen, 
was it to her a flowering in beauty. She con¬ 
ceived knowledge, in the last analysis, as a 
rather despicable outside element from which 
she might borrow a certain practical driving 
power as a sail borrows from a rising 
wind. 

But she liked Hassan better and better. 

With her characteristic, superb honesty she 
told herself that he was not the type of man who 
she had ever dreamed could interest her. The 
veil of Islam cloaks the face; cloaks not the imag¬ 
ining. So, formerly, she had imagined to her¬ 
self—imagined as coming into her life—a man 
who was a composite picture of her father, her 
father’s tales, and el-Fosiha’s tales: an Arab of 
course, and, like the nurse’s Ashanti lovers, 
a strong, merciless, swashbuckling warrior; too, 
since she was an Oriental girl, familiar, if 
vicariously, with sex and all the twisting ram¬ 
ifications of sex reactions, a man of subtle 
sexual approach, but tremendous, tireless sexual 
strength. 

Hassan was unlike all these former imag¬ 
inings. 

Yet, with that same honesty of hers she owned 


98 


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up presently that whenever she heard his footfall 
—she recognized his footfall—in the outer hall, 
she felt in her heart, not a thrill, nor the expecta¬ 
tion of a thrill, nor exactly an elation, but a 
peculiar, half painful unquietness; and then 
one day she made the discovery that the hours 
during which he taught her were underlined in 
her remembrance with scarlet and gold; that, 
somehow, this small, puny, ugly young man was 
wedging his personality into her life with a 
great and easy speed that was immeasurable 
and that brought a brimming joy mingling with 
awed confusion. 

She was not like a young American or English 
girl. She had no friends of her own sex and age 
to talk to, to confide in, to share her gaieties and 
sorrows and doubts. 

There was el-Fosiha. True. But the latter 
was after all a Saharan savage with just a thin 
veneer of Islamic civilization, and in spite of 
the mutual love there was no bond of under¬ 
standing. 

So Gouthia, was thrown back on her own men¬ 
tal and emotional resources; and the more she 
thought, the more she tried to combat and sup¬ 
press these thoughts, the more she felt that 
Hassan was growing into her consciousness— 


SHACKLED 


99 


her physical as well as her psychic conscious¬ 
ness. 


* * * * 

She puzzled if it was love. Doubted it at 
first. 

She had always pictured love as a sublime 
reaching and sweeping. And wha-t she really 
felt with Hassan was the absolute and vital 
necessity of his life to hers, the steadily increas¬ 
ing conviction that she needed him, that she could 
not do without him, that life without him would 
be only stinking dregs. 

Beneath his puny body and under his tranquil, 
scholarly peacefulness she felt a strong soul, per¬ 
fectly adjusted, proportioned and balanced, 
perfectly sure of itself; and in his deep, resolute 
eyes she read a great kindliness, an extraor¬ 
dinary power of sympathy, willingness to un¬ 
derstand, a priceless gift of tenderness and 
insight. 


* * * * 

There was yet something else. 

For she compared Hassan with her father. 


100 


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She loved the latter with an unflinching, un¬ 
questioning loyalty; loved him perhaps more 
with loyalty than with love. But as she watched 
him at meal time or at night on the roof-top, she 
told herself that she knew him, every word of his 
lips, every gesture of his hands, every throb of 
his blood. She could and did fathom him com¬ 
pletely. But she could not fathom the young 
dervish. There was something in back of his 
eyes, in back of his brain and soul which fas¬ 
cinated her and which she wished to read. She 
felt the man’s personality with a double inten¬ 
sity: an intensity of sensation, and an intensity 
of perception. Perhaps—though she did not 
put it to herself in these words—he was just life 
to her, nascent life, running clear and strong, 
and not merely an incident, an inserted wedge 
of life, a gesture, vivid or faint, that would pass 
presently into the dark like a sheet of foam. 

* * * * 

She wondered what Hassan felt about her— 
Hassan who, had she known, had loved her from 
the first with a love deeper than the dwelling of 
kings; a love that made each morning to him a 
new and glorious miracle of the single fact of 


SHACKLED 


101 

her existence and that danced in his blood with 
the wayward song of spring. 

It was desire. But it was more than desire. 
It was friendship and tenderness and deep lik¬ 
ing. It was gold. It was perfume. It was a 
flower. It was the sun and the moon and all the 
stars. It drove through his soul and body with 
a thousand spears. 

* * * * 

She was the first woman who had come into his 
life. His love was virginal. 

Not because of moral or physical scruples. 
But, perhaps, through lack, heretofore, of 
opportunity. 

For there were the years of his life as they had 
been. 

The first seventeen years, his parents dead, 
spent with his grandmother in the Bedawin en¬ 
campment far in the south. 

Memories of these years. Memories of work. 
Just work. Work without beauty. Work with¬ 
out future. Work without endeavor. 

Peasants. The tilling of the few stony acres. 
The herding of the half dozen goats. The tend¬ 
ing of the lonely milch-camel. The sheer toil 


102 


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of the raw, red clay that was both the right and 
the burden of his Bedawin inheritance. 

Bitter years. A child, he; and on his child¬ 
ish, puny shoulders the work of herder and 
husbandman. 

His daily, broken retreat before the brutish 
forces of the earth, with always the long pain of 
the brown, clogged furrows, and the sun in his 
face and the harsh rise of the hill, and the stray¬ 
ing of cattle, and an occasional fight with 
marauding tribesmen. 

A blunting of animal senses. A blunting of 
human tenderness. Life amongst the black tents 
—black as the tents of Keddar in Hebrew Scrip¬ 
ture—was too hard and too bitter. It could not 
rise above the tough facts of the soil, the cold 
congruities of the glebes. Few Bedawin women 
had more than two children. Fallow fields. 
Fallow wombs. Passion here was never joy. 
Passion, too, was work; a hateful duty; a dull, 
back breaking straining of muscle and tissue and 
spine. 


* * * * 

After his grandmother’s death, he had gone 
north to el-Korma. By chance he had wandered 


SHACKLED 


103 


into the tekke of the Molawee dervishes. There 
amidst the whirling limbs, the grey, swirling in¬ 
cense, and the droning music, the ‘‘call” had 
come to him. He had joined the Molawees 
eight years earlier. 

More work. Work of the brain, the spirit. 
Learning. Wisdom. Obedience. Discipline. 
Resignation. Faith. Islam. 

No women. Nor desire for women. 

Now woman had come to him. And desire. 
Gouthia. 

He tried to dissect this feeling so as to forget 
it; did not succeed. 

Profound it seemed, mystical, yet logical in its 
utter, basic sense like the mating of wind and 
fire. Poignant it seemed and restless and ra¬ 
diant and inscrutable. Inevitable it seemed, like 
the Molawee dervishes’ whirling dance before 
the changeless unity of the Lord God, like the 
forces that bind the planets and the seven suns. 
Unerring it seemed, like a stream flowing to its 
sea goal. 

He knew that his desire would never be ful¬ 
filled. 

For who was he, a poor dervish, once a lout¬ 
ish Bedawin peasant, he asked himself, that she 
should give him her love? 


104 


SHACKLED 


And, suppose she did, there was her father, 
with his haughty, ironic greeting whenever they 
met: 

66 Ah—the salute, Sir Ink-Grinder!” 

Or: 

“Must I get me a eunuch to guard my daugh¬ 
ter’s honor? A eunuch —hay ah, hay ah —to 
watch a eunuch!” 

Yet Hassan hoped. Hoped against hope. 

There was a saying which was frequently on 
the sheykh Abubekr Sabri’s lips: 

“Once in the life of each men—sayeth the 
Koran—comes to him his chance for happiness 
or woe. Once. And only once. And while all 
else is written from the beginning in the book of 
each man’s life by the Angel of the Scrolls— 
sayeth the Koran—there is left one page whereon 
each is permitted to trace, himself, the record 
of his choice.” 

The saying was with him, always. And with 
it, always, was the feeling that he was reaching 
toward some amazing beauty of fate which 
would sift the glory of gold and fire about his 
life’s dull ways. 

Flesh. The pain of the flesh stiffening with 
longing. Spreading its tide into every corner 
of his being, causing the mighty, impatient 


SHACKLED 105 

strings of life within him to quiver with an ex¬ 
quisite agony. . . . 

* * * * 

Often in those days Hassan borrowed the 
sheykh Abubekr Sabri’s blue-mottled stallion 
and rode into the desert to clear his brain. Out 
there the strength of the waste, yellow lands, the 
spawning of the eternal sands would come to 
him with a mighty surge, a feeling of elation 
and elemental, savage energy, a wish and will to 
succeed, to gallop back to el-Korma, to take 
Gouthia in his arms and tell her the full tale of 
his love—in spite of everything. 

But when he entered her house and passed, 
perhaps, her father in the outer hall, heard the 
latter’s withering: 66 Ah—the salute, Sir Ink- 
Grinder!”, the resolution would tumble about 
his ears like a house made of cards. 

He mentioned it one night to Abubekr Sabri. 
He had to speak of it. He could no longer con¬ 
tain the secret within himself. 

“But—” said Abubekr Sabri with mild re¬ 
proof—“she is . . .” 

“A Shareef. I know. And I—” Hassan 
shrugged his shoulders—“I am not of the lin- 


106 


SHACKLED 


eage. I am a desert rat.” He sighed. “The 
stones are hard on the path of my life.” 

“The stones are hard everywhere, every¬ 
where,” said the other. 

“I know.” 

Hassan paused; mused. He raised his thin 
arms in a high, wooden gesture. 

“Oh—” he exclaimed—“I wish—I wish I 
could . . . and you—you yourself—you say 
often that there is one page in the book of each 
man’s life whereon he is permitted to trace, him¬ 
self, the record of his choice. . . .” 

“But—are you strong enough to write this 
record-?” 

“I am weak—weak . . . I . . .” Hassan 
slurred; was silent; sat brooding and unhappy. 

“Youth dreams,” smiled Abubekr Sabri. 
“Then night dies. Comes young day. Day of 
facts. And the dream is forgotten—a thing of 
star dust.” 

“My love is not a dream. It is the fact of 
day.” 

“Then pray to the Prophet—peace on Him. 
Seek your refuge in Allah, the Lord of Day¬ 
break.” 

“I shall try.” 

“Perhaps—if you wish—I can send another 



SHACKLED 


107 

teacher in your place. There is Mohammed 
el-Yezdi. . . 

“No, no, no!”—vehemently—“I . . 

“I understand.” Abubekr Sabri interrupted 
very gently. “Even the dust of the rose petal is 
better than no rose at all, eh?” 

“Yes!”—dully. 

* * * * 

So Hassan tried to strangle the love in his 
heart. 

He was ever the same to Gouthia, rather im¬ 
personal, good-humored, patient. Only twice 
did he give way a little to his feelings; but so 
gently and fleetingly that she never guessed the 
tumult that lay back of his words. 

Once, in the midst of a lesson and without any 
special reason, he rose, salaamed deeply, and 
said: 

“Ana sahibaq —I am your very friend!” 

And another time, when she had recited a 
poem, he told her that her speech was like 
herself. 

“How?” she asked. 

“Loghrat et-teyr —sweet as the chittering of 
birds,” he replied. 


108 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

“Sweet as the chittering of birds,” he repeated 
to himself as he left her house to return to the 
tekke of the Molawee dervishes through el- 
Korma’s teeming streets. 

Spring had come to these streets overnight. 

It brushed through the ancient, coiling alleys 
on quivering, gauzy pinions. It hovered, bird- 
like, over the flat, white roof-tops. It gilded 
the minaret of the Mosque of the Five Swords. 
It dropped liquid silver over the toil of the 
mazed, scabbed streets. It painted Mustaffa 
Madani’s neglected garden with pastel shades 
of rose and heliotrope and delicate green; 
painted rainbow tints in the stinking, sticky pud¬ 
dles of the African quarter. It mirrored the 
dance of stars and fleecy clouds in a thousand 
windows. It clothed the farther desert with a 
mantle of amethyst and gold. It added music 
to the strident calls of pavement and gutter. It 
sharpened the pain of longing in Hassan’s heart; 
coursed through his body as with the blood of 
some infinite, intolerable yearning. 

He passed Mustaffa Madani who was on his 
way to the Bazaar of the Moroccan Jews. 


SHACKLED 


109 


He greeted him politely: 

“The Lord remember you for good!” 

* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani did not reply. Perhaps he 
had not seen the other, nor heard his words. 

He was in a despondent mood. 

* * * * 

At night these last few weeks, after the 
women had gone to bed, his hasheesh pipe was 
always lit. 

The acrid drug of the hemp was his one con¬ 
solation. On the grey wings of its smoke the 
material, hurting substance of outer life floated 
gradually away. 

Outer life. Present life. So ugly. So de¬ 
grading. So dishonoring. 

Christians; selfish, canting, lying. Jews; sub¬ 
tle, specious, quibbling, cheating. Christians 
and Jews—cursed be all unbelievers!—owning 
everything; spoiling everything; stealing every¬ 
thing. 

Incoherent hate seared his heart. 


110 


SHACKLED 


He smoked another pipe. 

Allah! Allah! Give me the sword when it 
is red, and the strength of the sword! 

Christians and Jews. So evil. 

There was in his remembrance that chapter of 
the Koran called The Quaking—speaking of the 
day when the earth shall quake with the quaking, 
and when the earth hath cast forth her burdens, 
and men shall say: “What aileth her?”—the 
day when the earth shall tell out her tidings be¬ 
cause the Lord God doth inspire her—the day 
when men shall come in companies from their 
graves to behold the works of their hands, and 
whosoever hath wrought an ant’s weight of good 
shall behold it, and whosoever hath wrought an 
ant’s weight of evil shall behold it. . . . 

Allah! Allah! The evil wrought by these 
foreigners—they shall behold it . . . shall see 
it mirrored in the flames of hell. . . . 

He smoked another pipe. The seventh pipe. 
The pipe of forgetting. 

Forgetting the present. Remembering the 
past. 

His soul reached out lean, hungry, nostalgic 
hands to this past, his former life, so fair and 
satisfying; away from his loneliness, his failure. 

The hasheesh sizzled with a reedy, fluting song. 


SHACKLED 


111 


There was no other sound. Even the whisper¬ 
ing night wind had died. The street cries had 
guttered out like spent candles. 

Hours of consolation. Hours of beauty. 

The air filled with scented fog. The few ob¬ 
jects scattered about him on roof top lost their 
outlines. He felt a confused sensation in the 
marrow of his bones and his muscles, some of 
which seemed to soften and almost to melt away, 
while others seemed to strengthen and grow 
greatly, and while his subconscious brain seemed 
endowed with a new and intense vitality. He no 
longer noticed the weight of his body pressing 
on the pillow; rather he became conscious of a 
tremendous new power. Hidden things became 
clear to him. The soul within his soul came to 
the surface with a flaming rush of speed. He 
felt himself part of nature—a direct expression 
of cosmic life. The currents of the earth pulsed 
in his veins with a puissant and mysterious 
rhythm. 

He smoked again. 

The hasheesh tasted sweet as summer 
rain. . . . 

Another pipe. 

Then sleep. Complete forgetting. 

But morning came. Headache. Grey facts. 


112 


SHACKLED 


“Heaven-Born! ”—el-Fosiha’s whine—“there 
is no salt in the house, no sugar, no spices. . . 

Grey, grey facts. 

Things growing from bad to worse. 

* * * * 

He had never, in all his life, earned as much 
as a single douro. He had, all through his 
life, steadily wasted the little property left 
him by his ancestors. The latter had taken their 
own wherever and whenever they had found it. 
A freebooting desertman by instinct and inheri¬ 
tance, he would have liked to do the same, would 
have felt no moral scruples of any kind. But 
in this century, under French rule, the strong 
arm—unless this strong arm belonged to the in¬ 
vader, the Christian, the foreigner—was liable 
to be interpreted as felony. The strong brain 
was in command. 

His stony orchard was worthless. His house 
was mortgaged from roof-top to cellar. There 
was hardly anything inside worth pawning or 
selling. Abubekr Sabri was rich, and his 
friend. But he would not, could not accept 
charity. He was a Shareef. He was of the 
lineage. 


SHACKLED 


113 


“I wonder,” he had said to el-Fosiha a few 
days before, “how a man can live on nothing.” 
“Allah will bring help!” 

“At times I doubt if Allah cares,” had come 
the bitter reply. 


* * * * 

This very morning M. Jean Esterneaux, of 
the department of interior revenues, had called 
on him with all the pomp and circumstance dear 
to the bureaucratic French soul, garbed in silk 
hat and unseasonable Prince Albert, around his 
comfortable paunch a tricolor sash to advertise 
the fact that he was on an official visit. 

He was a typical French colonial and in¬ 
tensely, aggressively, intolerantly republican. 
In the first-named capacity he disliked all Arabs; 
in the second he disliked all aristocrats. Thus 
he disliked Mustaffa Madani doubly since the 
latter was both an Arab and an aristocrat. 

“Monsieur,” he had said in French, sono¬ 
rously, stroking his silken, square-cut, russet 
beard, “your taxes are in arrear.” 

“I am aware of it,” Mustaffa Madani had re¬ 
plied, also in French. 

“When will you pay, monsieur?” 


114 


SHACKLED 


“I have not the faintest idea.” 

“But—it is your duty!” 

Somehow, the word had flicked the Arab on 
the raw. 

“Duty?” he had echoed, his eyes narrowing. 

“Yes, monsieur .” 

“Duty to whom—may I inquire?” 

“Duty to France, monsieur! Duty to the re¬ 
public!” 

Mustaffa Madani had laughed. 

“Is it my duty,” he had exclaimed, “to pay a 
thief, a robber who breaks into my house with 
weapons in his hands—as the French broke into 
the house of Islam, the house of the Arabs? Is 
it the house owner’s duty to pay the burglar? 
Is it the victim’s duty to pay the assassin?” 

His slow and rather cruel sense of humor had 
enjoyed the shocked expression on the other’s 
face as Esterneaux had leaned forward with ex¬ 
cited, jumbled words, his beard sticking out like 
a battering-ram: 

“ Monsieur! —Ah—do you realize to whom 
you are speaking?” 

“I do indeed!”—the drawl had held the thud 
of a hidden, deadly insult—“to a Frenchman, a 
foreigner!” 


SHACKLED 


115 


“But . . ” 

To a Christian—a liar—a thief—a burglar 
—an assassin!” 

“How dare you? God’s name! How dare 
you?” 

Esterneaux had struck the table with his 
clenched fist, and immediately Mustaffa Madani 
had stepped up to him, towering tall and broad 
and sinister, speaking quick, staccato, icy words: 

“Leave my house!” 

“Wh-what-?” 

“Leave my house!” 

“You—ah—you . . .” the Frenchman had 
spluttered, incoherently. 

Then he had controlled himself. He had 
taken a document from his pocket and had put 
it on the table. 

“Very well,” he had continued. “We of the 
administration are thoroughly familiar with your 
arrogance, Monsieur . Here is the official com¬ 
munication warning you that unless you pay in 
full and within the month—two thousand francs 
—your property will be sold for taxes. I wish 
you a very good morning, Monsieur .” 

He had left, chin in the air, carrying his 
beard ahead of him like a triumphant flag; and 



116 


SHACKLED 


now Mustaffa Madani, who understood that the 
other’s threat had not been an empty one, was 
on his way to the Bazaar of the Moroccan Jews. 

* * * * 

He touched the little package wrapped in a 
fold of his burnoose. It was the last of his 
wife’s jewels. He had intended giving it to 
Gouthia for a birthday present. It was a thin, 
exquisite chain of silver set with small dia¬ 
monds and moon-stones which, according to 
family traditions, had been a wedding gift of 
his ancestor, the Moorish king of Granada, to 
his favorite daughter Hafsah who had married 
the caliph of Bagdad. 

He crossed the Mellah, the ghetto. 

It was crowded with an excited throng. For 
tonight at sun-down began the festival in celebra¬ 
tion of the great red waters with which Jahveh 
had drowned the king Pharaoh, the oppressor of 
Israel. 

Already, in front of the synagogue, some pious 
old men had assembled, mumbling the ancient 
psalm through toothless gums: 

“Etaat terat kalla . . .” 

Already, here and there, rabbis and talmu- 


SHACKLED 


117 


dists moved majestically through the streets, 
dressed in burnooses of snowy silk, preceded by 
musicians—violins, guitars, and drums—and 
followed by laughing throngs that carried tall 
candles and trays piled with fruit and sweet 
cakes. 

Already, through the windows of the houses, 
brushed the allegretto chanting of thanksgiving 
to Jahveh: 

“Elo Elo Yano 
Elo Elo Yano 
Elo Elo Yano Elo Ehad 
Shoomir Ishrail. . . .” 

Always yelling and chattering, never quiet, 
today more than ever the ghetto quivered in a 
symphony of sounds that surged like the slow, 
insistent pounding of a distant surf. Laughter. 
Greetings. Sharp cries of barter and haggle in 
a bastard mixture of languages, as the street 
vendors asked the Jewish women to make their 
last purchases before sun-down for the feasting: 

“Dix francs!” 

“Cheap! Cheap! Nam Yah mallma —yes, 
0 my mistress!” 

66 Hi chouffi —look, look!” 

“Zoudj armat betkata —take both lots for 
three francs!” 


118 


SHACKLED 


“Here! Aiaou eldjadj es Soultna —chickens 
from the Sultan’s chicken coop!” 

“And stolen most likely!” 

“Barruch abba —welcome!” 

“Out of my way, fathers of dogs!” Mustaffa 
Madani’s rough command. 

He brushed through the crowds impatiently. 
He reached Abraham Maimonides’ place. 

* * * * 

The latter was about to close for the day. 

In the livingroom, in back of the shop, his 
wife had spread the table for the holiday feast. 
A rich, savory odor drifted through. 

“You are late, Sidi,” he said. “This is a 
holiday. Perhaps you will come back tomor¬ 
row. . . .” 

“No. Today.” 

“Very well. What is it?” 

“This!” Mustaffa Madani put the necklace 
on the counter. “How much for this, Jew?” 

“How much do you want, Sidi?” 

“Two thousand francs.” It was character¬ 
istic of Mustaffa Madani’s Shareefian sim¬ 
plicity in business affairs that he demanded 


SHACKLED 


119 


the price of his taxes; not a centime more. 

“Two thousand francs—a lot of money. . . . 
Hm-hm. . . .” Maimonides picked up the bau¬ 
ble; examined it; smiled. 

“Well?” demanded the other. 

“The silver is worthless, Sidi!” 

“The stones, Jew! The exquisite workman¬ 
ship!” 

“Who cares for workmanship these days, 
Sidi? Value is what they want—value in gold 
—value of buy and sell . . . and—look!— 
what value is there in this? The diamonds are 
splinters. And as for moon-stones—I ask you 
—who wants moon-stones? It would be a 
misvah, a generous deed, if I gave you thirty 
francs.” 

“Did you say—thirty. . . . ?” Mustaffa 
Madani did not believe his ears. 

“Yes.” 

“But . . ” 

“Thirty-five, Sidi! Why haggle on a feast 
day?” 

“I—I thought-” the Arab was utterly 

taken aback—“ah—two thousand francs . . 

“Why not a million? Sidi!” Abraham Mai¬ 
monides exclaimed with something akin to pity, 




120 


SHACKLED 


and he was speaking the truth. “I shall give 
you sixty francs—and then I am losing—by my 
wife’s honor!” 

“Curse you and your wife! Look, Jew. 
This jewel was worn by a princess of Granada 
a thousand years ago—when your ancestors were 
littering pigs.” 

“A live pig is worth money, Sidi, and what 
worth is there to a dead princess—of Granada— 
or even of Jerusalem the Golden? Sixty francs 
—and I am losing money—it is the truth—may 
I be father to my sons!” 

Suddenly Mustaffa Madani understood that 
the man was not lying. As suddenly the realiza¬ 
tion came to him of what it meant. He had 
nothing left to sell; had been living from hand 
to mouth these many years; had reached the 
end of his rope as people must. The French 
would make good their threat. They would sell 
his house. They would throw him into the 
street. Him and Gouthia. He was more be¬ 
wildered than despairing. He kept clutching at 
his head as though trying to pluck out the black 
thoughts that hurt his brain. 

“Allah!” 

It was a broken, shivering sob, torn from the 
very roots of his soul. 


SHACKLED 


121 


Maimonides looked up. 

He saw the other’s face, livid, ghastly, rav¬ 
aged. He read in every line a terrible deteriora¬ 
tion, a spirit all at once near the breaking point. 

“Listen, Sidi . . .” he said. 

He was about to offer advice, sympathy. 
After all, this was a feast day, and he was rich 
and happy and healthy. 

“Listen . . .” 

But already the Arab had picked up the neck¬ 
lace and was turning to the door. He lurched 
like a drunken man. He stumbled; nearly fell. 

His house, he thought, his daughter—and only 
until the end of the month to raise the money. 

And there was nothing else left to sell— 
nothing—nothing. . . . 

And what was he going to do ... ? 

He walked out, like a man in a daze. 

“Sidi!” Maimonides called after him. “I 
shall give you a hundred francs. . . .” 

There was no answer. He shrugged his shoul¬ 
ders. He closed the shop and entered the liv- 
ingroom. 

“Rebecca-my-gold,” he said to his plump, 
pretty wife, “it is as I told you. That Moslem 
is like an ebony tree back home in Morocco. 
He cannot bend. But he is brittle and hollow— 


122 SHACKLED 

and very soon now a storm will come and break 
him to pieces.” 

“Well, Abraham, let us give thanks to the 
God of Israel that you are not like him.” 

“You are right, Rebecca-my-star. Charming 
you are and beautiful as the flowers of the Tal¬ 
mud, and—” sniffing the rich, savory odors— 
“what a cook!” 

He washed his hands, put about his shoulders 
the tallit, the silken prayer shawl, and lifted the 
glass of sacerdotal wine to his lips. 

“Yoom ashishi mokray Kadish —” he sing¬ 
songed the ancient Hebrew incantation. 

“Yoom ashishi mokray Kadish —” came the 
triumphant echo from a thousand windows in 
the ghetto as, dazed, stumbling, Mustaffa Madani 
walked down the streets. 

* * * * 

He walked aimlessly. He walked for hours. 
He did not know where he was going, nor why. 

Night came. Rain fell. Rain stopped. 

He did not notice. He did not think. He 
did not feel. 

Then a ribald song, belched almost into his 
ear, startled him. 


SHACKLED 


123 


He recognized it: 

“If you want breasts, 

White breasts, 

Come to the house. 

The house of Fathma Ullal. . . 

The singer, a drunken Arab sailor, lurched on. 

“If you want breasts, 

White breasts. . . .” 

came his hiccough as he turned the corner. 

Mustaffa Madani looked up; looked about 
him. 

The street of vice. The street of lust. The 
doors that never closed. The brutish, sidewise 
flare of petrol lamps showing narrow rooms, 
French mirror wardrobes. 

Men in there, sinning their puny, bestial, 
turgid sins. Women of a dozen races, enor¬ 
mously ironic in the impersonality of their em¬ 
braces. 

Lips greedy for kisses. Hands greedy for 
money. Sour breaths. Stagnant eyes. 

A woman came from a house. 

She spoke to him, in broken Arabic: 

“Come, Sidi. Come with me. . . 

He looked at her. 


124 


SHACKLED 


She was evidently a European, perhaps an 
Englishwoman, still attractive with her honey 
colored hair, her oval face, her vividly red lips. 
But there was a haunting fear in her violet eyes, 
and, somehow, Mustaffa Madani pitied her and 
changed his harsh reply into soft words: 

“No, my child . . . no, no. . . .” 

“Please!” She clutched his arm. “Look! 
I am pretty.” 

“You are. But . . ” 

“Why not—then . . . ?” 

“I have not the money.” 

“Give me—this ... the thing in your 
hand. . . .” 

She pointed. He looked. His fingers were 
about the silver necklace. He had forgotten it; 
had not put it back into his burnoose . . . the 
necklace which had been a wedding gift of his 
ancestor, the Moorish king of Granada, to his 
favorite daughter Hafsah who had married the 
caliph of Bagdad. 

“Come!” the woman insisted. “Give it to 
me—and I will . . .” 

“Ho!” He interrupted her, with huge, side¬ 
splitting, unhuman laughter. “Here—here!” 

He thrust the jewel into her hands. He fol¬ 
lowed her into the house. 


SHACKLED 


125 


* * * * 

On the afternoon of the same day the meeting 
between Gouthia and Hassan was an accident, a 
pure matter of coincidence, though often in after 
years Hassan, with his Islamic philosophy, in¬ 
terpreted it as an especial sending of Fate. 

Heretofore he had never seen Gouthia alone. 
El-Fosiha was always in the room, dozing half 
the time, but a living reminder that this was the 
Orient, the land where decent women are veiled, 
and where nothing is private, not even grief or 
love. 

But that afternoon, with spring crying them out 
into the open, Gouthia and el-Fosiha had gone 
for a walk to the old Moslem cemetery at the 
edge of the desert. It was quiet and peaceful 
here among the tombstones that dreamed of 
Judgment Day. The sun was dipping low into 
gold and amber and crushed rose pink behind 
the rolling sand dunes that stretched to the south, 
carpeting the floor of the world for hundreds of 
miles toward the Sahara and Timbuktoo. 

A caravan trail cut through. But it was de¬ 
serted. Only occasionally a bit of desert flotsam 
would spring up over the brink of a rise and 
drift past: a Bedawin herder driving his flock 


126 


SHACKLED 


of goats on its northern migration to summer 
pasturage; an old woman trudging to some no¬ 
mad’s camp, panting under a huge fagot of 
brushwood; a camel rider ambling along with 
a faint jingling of bells. 

“Ah . . el-Fosiha sighed contentedly and 
squatted on her heels. 

She was grateful to the sun. It warmed her 
old bones. She welcomed the peace of the sands 
where all the sounds and all the movements of 
the earth seemed to have passed out of existence, 
where their very memory seemed to have died; 
and presently she fell asleep, still squatting on 
her heels, her mouth half open, her head rocking 
from side to side. 

* * * * 

Gouthia stared into the distance. 

She had always loved the desert; her own 
desert; her Arab birthright to the stretch of yel¬ 
low loam, the flanking and heaving of fantastic 
chalk rocks piled up as if by a giant’s playful 
hands, the sudden, vast clefts and hollows widen¬ 
ing into inky caves, the sand dunes stabbing with 
endless, golden gestures, and farther in the dis¬ 
tance, where the hills tumbled their stony ava- 


SHACKLED 


127 


lanche, the twilight of iridescent color amid the 
purple shadows. Above it all a sky of polished 
steel with a huge blaze of light—lonely, hot, 
dry—and free. 

Free! 

That was the breath of it, the rhythm, the 
secret. 

But today she felt no elation in the desert’s 
freedom. Freedom? Why—it was only an 
empty, meaningless word, a pale mockery. 

She was not free. She was a slave to the 
conventions and prejudices of Islam, tied to 
them hand and foot; and so she sat there, star¬ 
ing into the distance, while tangled dreams and 
desires ran to and fro over the surface of her 
soul. 


* * * * 

Finally she shrugged her shoulders. 

She cut off her dreams in mid-air. They 
would never come true. 

“Mektoob —it is so written!” she said. 

It is so written. The blight of Islam. The 
blight of her own young life. 

It was fatality. 

Fatality sneered at her from the face of the 


128 


SHACKLED 


desert. It dropped with the sun’s crackling rays 
as leaves drop in a dying forest. 

“Mektoob!” she repeated, with an accent of 
finality. 


* * * * 

She rose. She looked at el-Fosiha who was 
sleeping peacefully. She did not want to waken 
her. But she was nervous. She was not able 
to sit still. So she walked away a few steps; fur¬ 
ther away. She dropped her face veil. There 
was nobody here to see her; and she liked to 
feel the hot Saharan wind on her cheeks. 

The desert was all about her, coiling the spell 
of its molten, golden gyves; huge, unfathomable, 
sterile; yet, somehow, charged to the brim with 
life—life watching, waiting, hiding behind the 
yellow, shifting ramparts of apparent desola¬ 
tion. The sand dunes moved like the tides of 
the sea. They seemed drawn on, urged on by 
piled-up cycles of cosmic energy. They swirled 
south and away, dipping beyond the horizon, 
into the spawning eternities of time and space 
and God’s will. 

Gouthia walked on. An indescribable lone¬ 
liness was in her heart. 


SHACKLED 


129 


And then, turning the corner of a great, wind 
flayed rock, she heard the soft whinny of a horse, 
and a moment later saw Hassan sitting in the 
shade of the rock, his hands idly moving the 
pages of a book. 


* * * * 


He looked up. 

Her first impulse was to draw the veil across 
her face. Her second impulse was to leave it. 

And be it remembered that never, since she 
had reached the age of puberty, had any man 
except her father seen her face below the eyes. 
Be it remembered, furthermore, that the face veil 
means more to Oriental womanhood than a mere 
bit of wearing apparel; that while having be¬ 
come a symbol of a burden and even, in a way, 
of subjection, it has also in the course of time 
grown to be a symbol of chastity and purity. 
It would be an exaggeration to say that her reac¬ 
tions, her emotions, her physical and mental 
sensations as well as her physical and mental 
inhibitions were those of a young American or 
English girl, a virgin, who suddenly finds her¬ 
self naked before the man whom she loves—the 
man, moreover, who has never spoken to her of 


130 SHACKLED 

love. Yet there was somewhat of a parallel be¬ 
tween the two cases. 

Even so, for a reason which she did not, could 
not analyze, she obeyed her second instinct. 

She did not draw up her veil. She stared at 
Hassan proudly, almost challengingly. She did 
not even blush. Nor did she speak. 

She just stood there, head erect, eyes leveled 
straight, motionless but for the slight flutter of 
her narrow hands, the heaving of her breasts, 
the nervous quiver of her nostrils. 

* * * * 

Hassan dropped his eyes. Typically, it was 
the man, not the woman, who was ashamed. 

Then he opened his eyes, wide, almost 
greedily. 

He beheld the sweetness and glory of her face. 
He let the book slide to the ground. Very 
slowly, as though drawn by a magnet, he rose. 

He was conscious of a hard tightening and 
bunching of his muscles. He was aware of 
warring impulses within himself. 

He wanted to rush up to Gouthia, to take her 
in his arms, to carry her away struggling but 


SHACKLED 


131 


captured. He wanted to crush her beneath him, 
to overwhelm her with a sheer animal brutality 
of passion. And at the same time he wanted to 
throw himself at her feet, to embrace her knees, 
to implore her humbly—0, so humbly!—like a 
slave, to give to him her love, a tithe of her 
love; or if she could not, would not, to forgive 
him the greatness and impatience of his own 
love. 

Thoughts passing in the fraction of a second. 
Lasting an eternity. 

Confused, tangled thoughts. 

Thoughts that swept him from his known 
moorings. 

Body and spirit. Desire of the flesh; exulta¬ 
tion of the spirit. 

Too, an enormous gesture of life, of nature, 
of conceiving, creating. A sensing of elemental 
significance thrust into his consciousness. The 
silent syllables of a new language. 

Sex impulse and religious impulse, mingling 
queerly in his brain. 

Memories of the whirling, rhythmic dance in 
the dervish tekke. 

The Koran. Islam. So natural. So hu¬ 
man. So inevitable. . . . 


132 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

For the Merciful hath taught the Koran. 

He created the male and the female. 

He taught them clear speech. 

He taught them desire and fulfilment, 

An echo of His own creation. 

The sun and the moon in their courses 

And the planets and the trees do homage to 
Him. 

And the Heaven, He raised it, and appointed 
the balance. 

And the Earth, He prepared it for living 
things. 

Therein He created fruit, and the palm with 
sheaths, 

And grain with its husk, and the fragrant 
herb; 

Then which of the Lord’s bounties would ye 
twain deny? 

He created Man of clay like a pot. 

He created Woman out of a crooked rib of 
Man. 

Man He created for Woman, and Woman for 
Man: 

Then which of the Lord’s bounties would ye 
twain deny? 


SHACKLED 


133 


Lord of the two Easts, 

And Lord of the two Wests, 

And Lord of the female principle and the 
male: 

Then which of the Lord 9 s bounties would ye 
twain deny? 

He has let loose the seven seas which meet 
together. 

And His are the ships towering on the sea like 
mountains. 

All things in the Heaven and Earth supplicate 
Him: 

Then which of the LorcTs bounties would ye 
twain deny? 

Paradise He created for the True Believ¬ 
ers, 

And therein two flowing wells. 

And therein of every fruit two kinds, 

And therein the shy-eyed maidens, 

Whom neither Man nor Djinn hath touched 
before: 

Then which of the Lord’s bounties would ye 
twain deny? 

Blessed be the name of the Lord God, 

King of the seven worlds: 

Then which of the Lord’s bounties would 

ye . . . 


134 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

He came a little nearer. So did she. 
Neither spoke. Their eyes met; held each other. 

“No, no!” she said to herself as she felt an 
eerie, disquieting sensation perplexing her with 
a passionate reeling of life’s foundations as she 
had known them. 

She tried to subjugate her senses to the cool, 
authoritative command of her brain: 

“No, no . . ” 

She saw the question in his eyes. She read it. 
And something flashed from his eyes to the very 
roots of her soul, Causing her heart to pulse and 
sing in a triumph of delirious exultation. 

The frontiers of her being changed subtly. 
They melted. They reached out across her 
past life and the drab realities of her past life; 
out across time and space; opening—opening 
wide—to include him. 

Opening like a flower, to receive his manhood. 
Feeling it open. Feeling it in her mind, her 
imagining. Feeling it in her blood, her body, 
her flesh. Opening like flower petals to soft, 
warm summer rain. Feeling the warm moisture 
of it. 

Thoughts dropped away from her. 


SHACKLED 


135 


* * * * 

Nor were there now thoughts in his brain— 
thoughts that she was of the Shareefs while he 
was a Bedawin, a dervish, a nobody in race and 
clan, ugly and small and puny. 

At this moment he was the man, and she the 
woman. . . . 


* * * * 

“Once in the life of each man—sayeth the 
Koran—comes to him his chance for happiness 
or woe. Once. And only once. And while 
all else is written from beginning in the book 
of each man’s life by the Angel of the Scrolls 
—sayeth the Koran—there is left one page 
whereon each is permitted to trace, himself, the 
record of his choice. . . .” 

* * * * 


His choice. 

And then, as if a gigantic, nameless driving 
power were pushing him on, he found himself 
advancing toward her, his heart beating 
brokenly against his ribs, a flame cutting through 


136 SHACKLED 

him that left him without cerebral actions or 
reactions of any sort. 

She stood without moving, her eyes starry, 
her lips parted. Expectant she seemed; tri¬ 
umphant; and yet a little frightened. 

He felt her close to him. He felt the magic 
of her beauty, her perfume, her touch, with the 
blurred indistinctness of overwhelming desire; 
yet felt it not as a desire; felt it as a necessity, a 
truth. 

His arms were about her. He spoke no 
word. Nor did she. 

He saw her face close to his. He saw her 
eyes—soft, darkening, almost like those of an 
animal—look at him through half closed lids. 

He felt her lips yield to his, and he turned 
giddy with the joy and mystery of it, the dis¬ 
covery of it. His being closed about her like a 
wall. There was no outside world. There was 
no desert, no sky, no sun. There was only she 
and he. Only a woman and a man. And there 
was God. 

Sweet it seemed to him, and poignant and tre¬ 
mendously vital, and just a little tragic, as the 
sea is tragic and the depth of the forest at noon 
and the hiving of far stars. He felt the mighty 


SHACKLED 


137 


strings of life within himself, set a-quiver as by 
the forces of the earth, pouring through his body 
and soul with huge vibrations. It was more than 
passion—that blending of flesh and temperament 
and imagining. It was—between this man and 
this woman—a dual affirming of truth, truth 
of nature, truth of action. He knew the near¬ 
ness of Allah in this gesture, this vast evocation, 
as he had never known it in his mysterious, 
whirling dervish ritual, back yonder in the tekke 
of the Molawees. 

Her right hand was in his left. She heard 
the humming of his blood in her own veins with 
a steady reverberation, a powerful rhythm and 
measure. His fingers moved a little, curled in¬ 
side her hand, caressed her palm. A shiver ran 
through her like a network, immensely delicate 
and immensely strong, of a million feathery 
touches; and there was in her subconscious mind 
something like a sudden shifting of values, 
ethical, moral. 

A melting and crumbling of barriers. Two 
human forces leaping forth to mingle and make 
one. The primitive. The ultimate. 

And all this in the tiny space—as men count 
time—of five minutes, perhaps less. Yet it 


138 SHACKLED 

seemed an eternity before he heard his own 
voice, husky staccato: 

“I love you—I love you so. . . 

“And I love you. . . 

She hesitated; slurred; stopped. Then she 
continued with utter seriousness, with an utter 
abandon of her personality, her pride: 

“0 my lord!” 

She kissed him. 

“Why do you love me?” she asked. 

He held her close. All his impetuous Arab 
blood was in his words—lyric words, as they 
come to the race of Shem in moments of great 
emotion: 

“I love you because you are the budding of 
leaves in spring. I love you because you are 
the stir and rustle of the warm south wind. I 
love you because your hair is scented like ruddy 
harvest time. I love you because my heart has 
plunged into the darkness of your eyes and 
drowned therein. I love you because I know 
the touch of your hands in my dreams. I love 
you because you are the whisper of the unseen 
worlds, the breeze of the unknown shores, the 
gold of the unknown stars. . . .” 

He buried his face in the curling hair about 
her neck. 


SHACKLED 139 

“And you—” he asked—“why do you love 
me?” 

“Oh—” she smiled—“just because, heart of 
my heart! And—Hassan . . 

“Yes-?” 

“When did you first love me?” 

“When I saw you first.” 

“Impossible.” 

“Why, Gouthia?” 

“You did not know me then.” 

“I knew you enough to love you. And you, 
Gouthia, when did you first love me?” 

“I have always loved you—in this life—and 
in former lives. There was never beginning to 
my love for you, 0 my lord, as there will never 
be an end. . . .” 

“How much do you love me, Gouthia?” 

“Oh—how can I tell? More than my 
life, my soul, my faith in the Prophet—on 
Him the salute! And you—how much do you 
love me?” 

“My love is greater than yours!” 

“No!” 

“Yes!” 

“No!” 

“Yes!” 

“No!” 



140 


SHACKLED 


“Yes!” 

“No!” 

“Don’t let’s quarrel!” 

They both laughed. 

“How can I ever live without you?” 

“You will not have to, dear. . . .” 

“Sure?” 

“Quite sure!” 

Then, suddenly, a high, reedy voice inter¬ 
rupted the lovers; drove them apart: 

“Gouthia! Gouthia!” 

“El-Fosiha—” whispered the girl. “She is 
awake—and looking for me.” 

She turned to go. She pushed Hassan back 
as he was about to accompany her. 

“No,” she said. “Don’t let her see you.” 

“Gouthia! Gouthia! Where are you, 
child?” came the negress’ anxious call. 

“She is old-fashioned,” Gouthia continued 
rapidly. “If she should guess that you and I 
. . . Oh . . . She would tell my father . . .” 

And, with the word, she grew pale, fright¬ 
ened; she remembered. 

“My father—” she stammered—“what will 
he-” 

“I shall talk to him tomorrow morning.” 

“But he—he is . . 



SHACKLED 141 

Hassan looked at her with his deep, resolute 
eyes. 

“I am not afraid,” he said. 

She echoed the words with profound convic¬ 
tion: 

“Not afraid! Of course not! I know!” 

* * * * 

She kissed him. She disappeared around the 
corner of the chalk rock, ran up to el-Fosiha just 
as the latter was calling again: 

“Gouthia! Gouthia!” 

“Here I am, nurse.” 

“Where have you been?” 

“Just walking.” 

“But—alone-?” 

“I did not want to disturb you.” 

“What happened to your veil, child?” 

“I took it off—to feel the warm desert wind 
on my cheek.” 

The old negress was shocked. A convert to 
Islam, typically, she was rigid and narrow in 
her views. 

“Suppose somebody had seen you!” she ex¬ 
claimed. “What dishonor! Allah! What 
disgrace!”' 



142 SHACKLED 

“Who could have seen me? It is lonely in 
the desert.” 

“I thought I heard voices, Gouthia. I thought 
I heard you talking. . . 

“I was!” Gouthia replied, mischievously. 

“Oh—to whom?” 

“To myself—and to . . .” 

“Well—?” suspiciously. 

“To the little djinns of the desert—to the 
little dancing yellow sand sprites.” The girl 
laughed. “And—nurse-?” 

“Aha-?” 

“The little sand sprites told me they loved me 
—told me I was beautiful and soft and desir¬ 
able. . . ” 

“Hm—” grumbled el-Fosiha. “Perhaps you 
are. But your father is a man of short temper 
and impatient intestines. He will call me a 
black ape and, belike, make me eat stick if 
dinner is not on the table to await his arrival. 
Look. It is late.” 

She pointed west where the sun was sinking 
below the horizon, reddening the desert to deep 
russet, then chilling it to flat, silvery white, while 
the houses of el-Korma were misted in golden 
gauze. 

“Allah!” wailed the negress. “It will take us 




SHACKLED 


143 


over an hour and a half to walk home. Why did 
you not call me, child? Allah! But the master 
will be impatient!” 


* * * * 

El-Fosiha was right. 

Mustaffa Madani was already on the roof-top 
when, after a quick scurrying about the kitchen, 
she came up with steaming platters. 

He had only remained a short while with the 
Englishwoman. Quick, brutal passion. The 
memory sickened him. The woman’s mouth, 
like a moist, crimson gash. Her lolling, supine 
body, like a great white slug. Her pathetic at¬ 
tempts at love making. The scent of cheap 
perfume. 

He shivered with disgust; turned to el-Fosiha 
with curt words: 

“What manners be these, 0 mother of seven¬ 
teen times seventeen piglings, to keep me 
waiting?” 

“Gouthia and I went for a walk. The streets 
were so crowded. Then the rice burned—” 
she invented glibly—“I had to boil more.” 

“IPah!” came his sharp retort. “Excuses, 
like honey, are on the lips of the liar.” 


144 


SHACKLED 


He finished his meal rapidly. 

“Another cup of coffee?” asked el-Fosiha. 
“No.” 

“A glass of sherbet?” 

“No.” 

“A pipe, Heaven-Born?” 

“No, no, no!” 


* * * * 

He looked at his daughter. She looked at 
him. 

Father and daughter had passed tonight 
through a similar experience. Passion. 

He was ashamed of his memory. She exulted 
in her memory, but was afraid. 

He wondered if by word or gesture of his or 
intuition of hers she could guess what had hap¬ 
pened to him. She wondered if by word or 
gesture of hers or intuition of his he could guess 
what had happened to her. 

They spoke, almost simultaneously, instinc¬ 
tively, not knowing what they were going to 
say: 

“Father . . .” 

“Daughter . . .” 

They discontinued their sentences and were 


SHACKLED 


145 


silent, both too occupied with their own thoughts 
to ask the other what he or she had meant to say. 

* * * * 

It was a curious situation; a curious relation. 

They loved each other very deeply. Her love 
for him was warm and girlish, tinged with ad¬ 
miration and hero worship. His love for her 
was like autumn rain, the kind which one does 
not see, but which one feels, unceasing, penetrat¬ 
ing, slightly chilling. 

There was in his brain the brooding, black 
memory of the day’s events: the French tax 
collector’s threat, the fruitless visit to Abraham 
Maimonides’ shop, the ultimate danger to Gou- 
thia and himself. He had meant to tell her. 
Perhaps, as never before, his harsh, unyielding 
soul craved for consolation and support; felt the 
stark solitude that, all these years, had crept 
upon him and had let his brain feed unhindered 
on its own delusions. Yet, finally, he decided 
that he would not. He would not worry 
her young soul until the last moment, until the 
catastrophe was imminent. She could not help 
him; and something might turn up to get him out 
of the mire. 


146 


SHACKLED 


Her thoughts ran in a parallel groove. When 
Hassan had told her that he was not afraid she 
had believed him implicitly. She still believed 
him. But she knew her father, and she won¬ 
dered if it would be wise to prepare him for her 
lover’s visit. But she, too, decided that she 
would not worry him. The morrow would be 
here soon enough. Only, thinking of what might 
happen then and fearing it, for the first time in 
her life she put considerations of herself, her 
own life and future and happiness, above the 
love for her father. Not that her love for him 
lessened. It was as strong and great as ever. 
It was simply relegated to a secondary place. 
Nor had she become selfish. Selfishness means 
a narrowing scale of life’s values; and her scale 
had broadened, had expanded to include nature, 
conception, creation, womanhood. But at that 
moment, with all these subconscious thoughts 
coiling and recoiling in her brain, suddenly, her 
face took on an expression of obstinacy, almost 
of hardness, that brought out a striking resem¬ 
blance between father and child. 

El-Fosiha felt it. It disturbed her vaguely. 
She did not know what to make of it. 

It was quite still on the roof-top. 

Mustaffa sighed. 


SHACKLED 


147 


As often in the past, when confronted by the 
present’s bitter problems, he spoke all at once 
of former days, complainingly, regrettingly; 
spoke of the change that had come to those of 
Shareefian lineage: 

“The burden of our ancient race is hard to 
bear. . . 

El-Fosiha raised pious hands to the fire veined 
vaulting of the evening sky. 

“The Lord God is everywhere!” she said with 
weak consolation. 

“Do you indeed think so?” he countered 
ironically. 

“Yes.” 

“Hm-” He shrugged his shoulders, rose, 

and turned to go. “I am tired. Good night!” 

“Good night, father!” 

“Good night, Heaven-Bom!” 

He left, and for a long time the two women 
sat on the roof top without speaking. 

* * * * 

The streets were deserted. Night had 
dropped quickly. It lay over el-Korma with a 
brocaded mantle of purple and silver. It 
dimmed the roof tops to delicate grey. It 



148 


SHACKLED 


twinkled with a lone, nostalgic spot of gold on 
the minaret of the Mosque of the Five Swords. 
The houses and bazaar booths were shuttered 
until the morning. 

Not a blind quivered. Not a glimmer stabbed 
through the wooden gratings. There was not a 
sound. 

Life seemed hidden away secretly; barred be¬ 
hind the veil of Islam. There was not even a 
rag of wind, fluttering, sighing. 

* * * * 

The stillness weighed on el-Fosiha’s nerves. 
She looked at Gouthia who was staring into the 
distance with dreamy eyes. She coughed. But 
the girl paid no attention. 

El-Fosiha smiled. 

She knew an unfailing way of awaking Gou- 
thia’s interest. 

“Gouthia!” she called. 

“Yes—?” listlessly. 

“Did I ever tell you of the Ashanti warrior, 
the crusher of stones, the killer of lions, down 
in the south, who loved me? Hay ah, hay ah !— 
but our love was sweet! Hay ah !—but our love 
was strong. . . 


SHACKLED 


149 


Gouthia’s high, clear laugh cut through the 
negress’ words like the edge of a sword. 

“Allah!” she exclaimed. “And what do you 
know of love?” 

Again she laughed, loudly, triumphantly, as 
she thought of the morning and her lover’s 
coming. 

Again silence. 

Night was everywhere, black, strong. Across 
the heaven the stars trailed golden patterns. A 
bird came from nowhere with a whirring of 
wings, then vanished into an eddy of wind. The 
wind increased. The palm trees creaked. 

Gouthia’s voice. Suddenly: 

“Nurse?” 

“Yes?” 

“Tell me . . ” 

“What?” 

“You—you have had children-?” 

“I? Children? Yes!” She opened the 
gates of remembrance. “Many children—” 
proudly—“as many as there are hairs on your 
head! I was never one of your barren, useless, 
dried-up women! Seven children—eight—not 
counting the twins I bore your father—they 
died when they were quite young! Give me 
a strong lover—” she laughed—“better two— 



150 


SHACKLED 


and I could people the Sahara! Why . . 

“Nurse!” interrupted the girl. “To bear a 
child—it hurts-?” 

“The pain is sweet—if you love.” Again el- 
Fosiha laughed. “Perhaps you yourself—some 
day . . .” 

“May Allah grant it!” 

* * * * 

She did not sleep that night. 

Morning came with elfin lights and rose red 
shadows. It came with the teeming of streets 
and bazaars and, from the minaret of the 
Mosque of the Five Swords, with the muezzin’s 
call to the first prayer of the day: 

“Yah abyd Illah, la ilah ill 9 Ullah , waked 
Ullah —0 ye worshipers of the Lord, there is no 
God but the Lord! One the God is!” 

“One the God is!” the passionate refrain of 
the True Believers. 

“One the God is!” echoed Gouthia. 

And, incoherently, raising clasped hands: 

“Help me—help me—0 Merciful . . .” 

She sank on her knees. She touched the 
ground with her forehead. 

Deep prayer in her soul. . . . 



SHACKLED 


151 


* * * * 

All that is in the Heaven and on Earth 
Magnifieth the Lord: 

He is the Mighty, the Wise, the Merciful! 

He giveth life, and giveth death, 

And He is powerful over all things: 

He is the Mighty, the Wise, the Merciful! 

He is the first, and the last. 

He is the seen, and the unseen. 

All things doth He know: 

He is the Mighty, the Wise, the Merciful! 

It is He who created the Heaven and the Earth 
in six days, 

Then ascended the Throne. 

He knoweth what goeth into the earth, 

And what cometh out of it, 

And what cometh down from the sky, 

And what riseth up into it. 

And He is with you, wherever ye go, 

And He seeth what ye do: 

He is the Mighty, the Wise, the Merciful! 

To Him all things return. 

He maketh the night to follow the day, 

And he maketh the day to follow the night, 
And he knoweth the secrets of the breasts: 

He is the Mighty, the Wise, the Merciful . . . . 


152 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

A thud of the knocker on the outer gate. 

Gouthia ran to the latticed balcony and looked 
out. Down below was Hassan. 

“You are early for the lesson,” said el-Fosiha, 
opening the gate. 

“I am not here for the lesson. I would like 
to speak to the Sidi.” 

“He made an appointment with you?” 

“No.” 

“Then I do not think that he will. . • 

“It is very important, el-Fosiha.” 

“But . . ” 

“Please!” 

“I shall ask him. Wait.” 

* * * * 

She closed the door. 

Hassan waited on the threshold, and Gouthia 
whistled softly. He looked up. He saw her 
narrow hand fluttering through the lattice, with 
a slight, silent message of trust and hope and 
faith. 

He smiled. 


SHACKLED 


153 


Low and clear, his words drifted to her ears: 

“I love you. . . 

Again the hand fluttered. It withdrew. It 
reappeared a few moments later and dropped a 
crimson damask rose. He picked it up and 
pressed it to his lips. 

It was all very simple. It was all very trite 
and usual and commonplace. But to these two 
it seemed that it had never happened before, not 
to anyone in all the world; that nobody had ever 
loved as they loved. 

He said so, cupping his lips with his hands: 

“There was never love like mine!” 

“Except mine!” 

She opened the lattice a little. She showed 
him her unveiled face for the fleeting fraction of 
a second. Then, quickly, she closed the lattice 
as a street vendor came swinging around the cor¬ 
ner with his raucous shout: 

“Here are vegetables! Eggplants! Gourds! 
Cheap! Cheap here!” 

Other street vendors. Rushing. Shouting. 

“Trade with me, 0 Moslems I am the father 
and mother of all cut-rates!” 

“Salty and savory! Salty and savory!” 

“Mint! Mint here!” 


154 


SHACKLED 


The puling Semitic symphony. 

Barter and trade. 

Day had begun. . . . 

* * * * 

Inside, el-Fosiha salaamed before Mustaffa 
Madani and announced the young dervish’s 
visit. 

“What does he want?” asked Mustaffa 
Madani. 

“I do not know.” 

“Tell him I do not wish to see him.” 

“He says it is very important.” 

“Oh-?” 

Mustaffa Madani’s eyes were blood-shot. His 
hands were shaky. He felt as if somebody had 
plucked out his nerves one by one and had 
stuffed them back again in the wrong places. 

Like his daughter, he had not slept the night 
before. Nor, in spite of the temptation, in spite 
of the agony of his tortured nerves, had he sought 
the consolation of the hasheesh pipe. 

Deliberately, cold-bloodedly, he had gone 
over his life and had drawn the sum total: 
failure. 

Not for one moment had he blamed himself. 



SHACKLED 


155 


He had blamed the world at large, almost con¬ 
vinced that the rest of mankind, not only the 
French, but all Christians, all Jews, even his fel¬ 
low Moslems, had formed a conspiracy to pull 
him down to their own ignoble level. He was 
beginning to feel that he could bear it no longer. 
It was becoming a pathological obsession. 

It was not only the grinding poverty, the im¬ 
minent danger of being thrown into the street 
with his daughter, like beggars, homeless, penni¬ 
less. It was not that the future looked even 
blacker than the present. These were material 
considerations. He would carry through some¬ 
how. 

What really lacerated his soul was the fact 
that he must suffer equality, the patronage, of the 
very people whom he had always despised: the 
French, the Jews, the Moslems of low degree; 
the Greeks and Armenians who were gradually 
drifting into the land, like vultures to the reek 
of carrion, mostly as middlemen and usuring 
money lenders, parasites all, taking as security 
the cow and the unborn calf, relying on their 
shifty, crooked cleverness and on the fact of be¬ 
ing Christians and usually, by devious ways, 
British subjects or American citizens, to outrage 
every code, legal or moral and to set up a howl, 


156 


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that reverberated through every chancelery and 
foreign misson board and newspaper in Europe 
and America when a Moslem, driven to despair, 
unable to obtain justice in a court presided over 
by Christians, finally took the law into his own 
hand—the ancient law—the sword. 

All this. The shame and humility of it. 
Weighing on Mustaffa Madani’s mind. 

But what hurt him most was that, instead of 
laughing at their pretensions and presumptions 
as he used to, he was actually commencing to 
subscribe to them himself. 

He remembered yesterday afternoon when he 
had gone to the bazaar of the Moroccan Jews. 

He had been on the very point—had caught 
himself just in the nick of time—of pleading 
with Abraham Maimonides, of imploring him 
for more money, of giving him the pity and the 
pain of his sordid confidence. 

He felt the harassing doubt that the first bul¬ 
wark of his citadel—the barrier of his reticent, 
sardonic haughtiness, the barrier of his Shareef- 
ian principles—was being unhinged, was about 
to crash and splinter, to tumble about his ears. 
And so, all last night, he had kept awake trying 
to repair the breach in his defences—with 
thoughts, with vain imaginings, with self-assur- 


SHACKLED 


157 


ance, since he had no other tools—trying to keep 
intact that magnificent and idiotic talisman of 
pride which had ruined his life. 

And here, like a challenge, came this young 
dervish, this upstart, this Bedawin, this desert 
rat, this nobody, who “would like to see him on 
important business.” 

As if they were equals! 

As if they had broken bread and tasted salt 
together! 


* * * * 

A harsh refusal was on his tongue. 

Then he reconsidered. 

Perhaps the man was here with a message 
from his master, the sheykh Abubekr Sabri. 

“I shall see him,” he said briefly. “Show him 
in.” 

“Listen is obey, Heaven-Born!” 

A few minutes later el-Fosiha ushered in the 
visitor and withdrew. 

* * * * 

Hassan salaamed deeply. 

“Teranee b’illah, yah Sidi, wah baq ana dak - 


158 


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hilaq —” he said ceremoniously, decently—“by 
the Lord you see me, and I enter, sir, under your 
protection.” 

“The salute!” came Mustaffa Madani’s short 
greeting. 

He neither offered the other his hand, nor did 
he ask him to sit down. 

“And you want—what?” he asked. 

Hassan felt nervous. He was not strong in 
body, and he was aware of it. Nor was he ex¬ 
actly a brave man. Of this, too, he was aware. 
Of both he was ashamed. And so, to overcome, 
rather to counteract, the double failing, and un¬ 
able to arm himself with bodily strength, he had 
deliberately, in self-protection, cultivated cer¬ 
tain disarming characteristics, had forced him¬ 
self to acquire an earnest self-mastery, to ac¬ 
quire the virtues of patience and good-humor 
and tolerance. He had furthermore the in¬ 
herited sense of dignity bequeathed to him by 
many generations of Bedawin ancestors. 

With the help of these qualities, he had pre¬ 
pared beforehand what he was going to say to 
Mustaffa Madani, word for word. He had even 
endeavored to imagine the other’s replies, his 
protest and fury, and his own probable counter¬ 
arguments. 


Now, face to face with him, he was losing all 
his serenity. The carefully memorized speech 
slipped from his mind as sand slips through fin¬ 
gers. He caught himself blushing; hated him¬ 
self for it. 

He tried to speak out straight and manly and 
to the point—and could not. 

“I—” he stammered—“I do not suppose 
you know why I am here, Sidi-?” 

“A message from the sheykh, eh?” 

“No, Sidi.” 

“No-?” Mustaffa Madani raised his eye¬ 
brows. “What then-?” 

“I am here . . .” 

“Well—why?” 

“I am here—oh-” Hassan felt more and 

more nervous; became more and more conscious 
of the fear in his heart—“I am here—on a 
personal matter.” 

“Personal matter—between you and me, 0 
creature?” 

“Yes, Sidi.” 

“There can be nothing personal between you 
and me,” was the chilly retort, “unless—” with 
bitter irony—“you are one of my creditors— 
one of the many to whom I owe money. If you 
are, help yourself to my house, my beard, and 







160 


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the mice in the bin. But—” pointing at the 
door—“leave me alone!” 

“Sidi—Sidi—please-” Hassan made an¬ 

other effort to speak with force and cogency. 
But he was not successful. His voice shook. 
“I must—by the Prophet—by Allah and all the 
true Saints. . . .” 

“Do not quote the Koran to the buffalo about 
to gore you!” came Mustaffa Madani’s grim jest. 
“Go!” 

Hassan salaamed. 

“Sidi!” he implored. “Listen to me!” 

And, in the home-spun parlance of the desert, 
as one asking for hospitality and protection, 
salaaming deeply with outstretched hands, he 
added: 

“Behold, my lord! I have alighted at your 
tent!” 

“And my tent, being mine own tent, 
refuses your feet and your face,” came the 
reply. “Go away at once. The interview is 
ended.” 

“Please . . ” 

“The interview is ended!”—Mustaffa Mada¬ 
ni’s voice rose a sudden, minatory octave. 


* * * * 



SHACKLED 


161 


Again the younger man blushed. 

His lips quivered. His throat felt parched. 
He noticed that his left hand was trembling 
violently. 

He was afraid; physically afraid. 

His mind leaped to the sordid knowledge of 
it; and, paradoxically, it helped him to regain 
a little of his patiently acquired self-possession. 

His senses were numbed. But his voice was 
now quite steady: 

“Forgive me, Sidi. But I shall not leave this 
room until you have heard me and answered 
me. 

Mustaffa Madani was an obstinate man, of a 
headstrong tendency to jump the fences of his 
own making; and, in spite of it or because of it, 
it infuriated him to see the same quality in 
others. 

He had been sitting with his back to the win¬ 
dow, his face in the shadows. Now he moved 
forward a little. By a sidewise twist, his face 
came into the bright rays of the sun. Hard, 
tough-grained, Gothic, it stared at Hassan with 
a certain unhuman ferocity; sinister; almost 
depraved. 

Hassan felt like turning and running away. 
But he did not. 


162 


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The reasons for his obstinacy were peculiar 
and illogical. For, just then, his love for Gou- 
thia which had brought him here and kept him 
here, was paralleled by a queer curiosity. He 
wanted to see what would happen. A detached 
portion of his brain watched the scene, watched 
himself, with a keen, slightly ironic interest. 

He heard his own words, speaking with an 
agitated abruptness: 

“No! I will not leave this room—this house 
—not until . . 

“Allah!” exclaimed Mustaffa Madani. 

Then, suddenly, the sight of the young dervish, 
so puny compared to himself, his pathetic and 
footling stubbornness, caused his mirth to rise in 
uncontrollable waves. 

His lips began to twitch. 

Finally he laughed loudly and frankly. 

“Very well,” he said. “Tell me if you must. 
If I do not listen to you I am afraid that you 
may lose your temper and smite this hoary old 
pate. I submit to Fate. Tell me, Sir Ink- 
Grinder.” 

Hassan winced beneath the blighting ridicule. 
Yet it was this same ridicule which stiffened his 
fibre and made him speak, straight out. 

“Sidi!” He took a step forward. His face 


SHACKLED 


163 


was the color of ashes. But his voice was 
clear. “I have the honor to ask of you the hand 
and the body of your daughter Gouthia in 
marriage.” 

Mustaffa Madani looked up. He wrinkled 
his forehead. He was honestly puzzled; hon¬ 
estly doubted his ears. 

“You—ah-?” he asked. “I heard 

right-?” 

Hassan’s lips drew into a thin line. His eyes 
were wide and resolute. Now that he had 
spoken the crucial words and could not take them 
back even had he wished to, he was fearless. 

“Yes, Sidi,” he said simply. 

* * * * 

Mustaffa Madani did not speak. He could 
not. His lips were unable to form words. In 
a back cell of his brain, incredulity glanced, 
squint-eyed, at ferocity. Presently the two 
would mingle. 

He rose very slowly. 

His eyes narrowed into slits. His jaws 
clamped. The veins on his temples stood out 
like ropes. His brain seemed dry and crimson. 

Again he tried to speak—something; any- 




164 


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thing; a curse; a foul insult. Again his lips 
could not form and utter the words. 

He made another step forward. 

His jaws were clamped no longer, nor were 
his eyes like slits. His jaws were loose, sag¬ 
ging; his eyes wide and round and glassy. 

His great, hairy hands opened and shut con¬ 
vulsively. His whole massive frame—now that 
incredulity and ferocity had mingled—hungered 
for a concrete and brutal realization of the hate 
that was twisting his soul. 

He advanced slowly, his face like that of a 
corpse, exuding an atmosphere that was less 
frightening than indecent in its bestial naked¬ 
ness—obscene—prurient. 

Still he advanced, slowly, while the other 
stood his ground, continuing to speak in that 
same clear voice: 

“I am not of the lineage. I know it. I am 
a nobody by race, a dervish, a Bedawin, a poor 
man. But I love your daughter. I shall make 
her happy. I love her—and she loves me. . . .” 

* * * * 

Hassan’s last words released the catch in Mus- 
taffa Madani’s brain. 


SHACKLED 


165 


That Hassan should love his daughter—yes— 
it was possible. Even that Hassan should speak 
of it. An arrogance. Decidedly. But a sign 
of the times. 

But that Gouthia should return the man’s love 
—unless Hassan lied, and it was clear to him 
that he did not lie—why . . . thoughts and 
imaginings poured blindingly upon him. . . . 

Hassan must have spoken to Gouthia 
alone. . . . 

Must have spoken to her of love, and she 
to him . . . perhaps kissed her . . . per¬ 
haps. . . . 

His brain threw out the thought; caught it 
again, on the threshold; jerked it back; played 
with it. . . . 

Perhaps his lineage was already dishonored 
—besmirched . . . and . . . 

“Allah!” The single cry came from his lips. 
High. Broken. Almost squeaky. Grotesque. 
Ludicrous. And terrible. 

His brain, hate scabbed, telegraphed to his 
hands and feet, to his whole body; and, in the 
fraction of a second which it took him to clear 
the intervening space between him and the der¬ 
vish, again the maddening obsession came to 
him that all mankind was plotting against him, 


166 


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conspiring to pull him down to their own ig¬ 
noble level. They had taken away everything 
that he had prized: his pride, his lands, his feu¬ 
dal privileges, his thoroughbred stallions, his 
desert freedom. Only two things had remained 
to him: his house and his daughter. And now 
the first was forfeit to the French; and the 
second—his daughter. . . .” 

She, too . . . 

“No!” he cried. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” 
* * * * 

His fist struck Hassan squarely between the 
eyes. Hassan went down. Mustaffa kicked 
him where he lay; kicked him with all his 
strength; in the face, the chest, the back, the 
groin. He bent. He picked him up. He 
stood him upon his feet. He knocked him 
down again. Again pulled him up. Kicked 
him again; in the face, the chest, the back, the 
groin. 

Over and over, as if it were some hideous 
game of hide-and-seek. 

He was drunk with rage; insane; blind. 

He snarled, like a dog, with tongue protruding. 

Again he bent down. His left hand gripped 


SHACKLED 


167 


the other’s lean throat, squeezing it like a vice, 
breaking the skin, feeling the hot, red blood, his 
fingers digging the flesh to quivering, agonized 
pulp, while his right hand rained blow after 
blow upon the defenceless face. 

Drunk. Insane. Blind. 

He saw nothing. Heard nothing. Only the 
vibrations in his own heart. 

They surged up, immensely, chokingly, echo¬ 
ing with a terrible rhythm: 

Kill—kill—kill. . . . 

* * * * 

It was all very brutal, very horrible, very 
pathetic and sordid and tragic and obscene: this 
strong-thewed, lawless man of the Shareefs, 
this giant who had lived most of his life in the 
open, this tough, full-blooded, splendid blending 
of bones and muscles and tissues, battering the 
weak little student to pieces. Yet, unconscious 
at first, presently, gradually, the increasing pain 
of Mustaffa Madani’s fingers boring into his 
flesh, brought back a semblance of consciousness 
to Hassan; and inside of his brain something 
like a colored glass ball shivered into a thousand, 
iridescent splinters. He hated, perhaps for the 


168 


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first time in his life. He fought back. His 
ludicrous little fists went like flails, bruising their 
knuckles on Mustaffa Madani’s steely frame. 
His body wriggled and twisted as he tried to free 
himself from the dreadful grip that was squeez¬ 
ing out his life. He jerked his head frantically 
from side to side, endeavoring, helplessly, hope¬ 
lessly, to escape the rain of blows. Nor was it 
altogether the instinct of self-preservation that 
made him fight back. There was, furthermore, 
in his dazed mind the singular conviction that, 
somehow, though he had never a chance to win 
and though he knew it, he was battling for his 
love, for Gouthia; and, clicking to the thought, 
his spirit gave the lie to his body. He was no 
longer the dervish, no longer the peaceful Is¬ 
lamic scholar. The savage, lawless Bedawin 
blood inherited from his ancestors screamed in 
his veins; and when for a second the other 
loosened his grip, he jerked his head down and 
sank his teeth into Mustaffa Madani’s wrist with 
all his strength and desperation, causing the 
blood to trickle thickly. The next instant the 
cruel fingers closed once more about his throat. 

Hassan could not speak. Mustaffa Madani 
did not. The fight was sinister in its quietude, 
with no noise except the shuffling of feet, Has- 


SHACKLED 


169 


san’s staccato, whistling breath as it was forced 
through tortured, bursting lungs, and the grunts 
—animal-like, half sensuous—that came from 
the other’s lips. 

And so, finally, the Shareef dragged the young 
dervish to the door, through the hall, down the 
stairs. 

He pushed him across the outer threshold into 
the street, and kicked the unconscious form while 
men and women ran up from all sides, from the 
bazaar, the houses, the Mosque of the Five 
Swords, excited, shouting, clamoring, protesting. 

Someone rushed back into the mosque. He 
returned with the mullah, the priest. 

The latter laid ineffectual hands upon Mus- 
taffa Madani’s arms. 

“Sidi, Sidi!” he said. “You will stain your 
hands with a brother-Moslem’s life blood! I 
beseech you ...” 

Mustaffa Madani paid no attention. 

He bent. He kicked. He struck. Struck again. 

“May the Lord God let you see the right!” im¬ 
plored a gnarled, berry brown old Arab market- 
woman, her face veil awry, her weak fingers 
clutching at the man’s burnoose. 

A seam of the burnoose ripped. Once more 
the pitiless fist descended. 


170 


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Blood. Pulped flesh. A cry of agony. 

“No, no, no, my lord! Do it not!” exclaimed 
the orange-vendor. 

Mustaffa Madani did not hear. His rage was 
the rage of the beast of prey. The vibrations 
in his heart were making him dizzy. He 
snarled like a wolf. Foam was on his lips. 

The orange-vendor was afraid. But he was a 
decent man. He shook his head. 

“No!” he said. “No—by my beard!” 

He abandoned his basket of fruit, and, head 
foremost, he launched himself into the fray, 
tackling the Shareef around his stout, oak¬ 
like legs, trying to pull him away from his vic¬ 
tim. 

“Help, help, Moslems!” he begged. 

And others took heart. They joined in. 
They dragged Mustaffa Madani away, while 
more people ran up, with excited questions and 
answers: 

“What has happened, 0 daughter of the milk- 
seller?” 

“As the Lord liveth!”—a finger pointed at 
Mustaffa Madani—“There standeth a mur¬ 
derer!” 

“No, no! The lad still breathes!” 

“Yes!” A fat Jewess bent over Hassan, 


SHACKLED 


171 

touching his fluttering heart. She turned to her 
daughter. “Water, Deborah! Run!” 

“What has the lad done—to be beaten so?” 

“He is a thief!” 

“The Sidi caught him!” 

“No, no, he is no thief! Look—he is a 
dervish. . . .” 

“Aye—a dervish. . . .” 

“A holy man! Beloved by the Lord God!” 

“Shame upon you, Sidi!” shrieked the old 
market-woman. “Shame—for attacking a der¬ 
vish! May you in the hereafter roast in ever¬ 
lasting hell fire!” 

“Wah! If I met you in hell I would not as 
much as spit on you to cool your burning, 0 
assassin!” 

“He drew a knife! I saw it with these eyes!” 

“Yes—by my neck and the adorable Lord— 
I bear witness!” 

Mustaffa Madani spoke through clenched 
teeth: 

“Let me go! Let me go!” 

He struggled desperately. He tried to break 
away, to return to the attack. But a dozen hands 
held him. 

“No, no!” said the orange-vendor. “The 
Lord lead you away from evil!” 


172 


SHACKLED 


“Rahmat Ullah —” mumbled the priest, help¬ 
ing the Jewess to pour water down Hassan’s 
contracted, convulsed throat—-“the Lord His 
mercy!” 

Again the old market-woman broke into vitu¬ 
perations. 

“A holy man! He has killed a holy man!” 
She shook a fist beneath the Shareef’s nose. 
“Burn your father! Burn your mother! Bless 
you not the Lord God! Curse the unclean father 
of your head and belly!” 

More confusion, excitement, noise—noise that 
finally drifted up to Gouthia’s room to which 
she had retired and where she had sat dreaming 
of her love, her future. 

* * * * 

She ran to the balcony. She looked through 
the lattice. She saw; and a few moments later 
she was downstairs, followed by el-Fosiha. 

The latter was clinging to her, trying to re¬ 
strain her. 

“Gouthia!” she implored. “Please—please 
—come back—consider the shame of it—the 
scandal! Come back, child! This is none of 
your meddling!” 


SHACKLED 


173 


The girl paid no heed to the old negress. She 
tore herself away from her restraining grip. 
She pushed through the crowd. She threw her¬ 
self across the dirty, moaning, bleeding figure. 

“0 my beloved!” she cried. “0 piece of my 
soul!” 

She took the battered face in her hands. She 
kissed the bruised lips passionately. 

There was a pause. 

And then, in an agony of love and pain: 

“What have they done to you, beloved? 
Allah! What have they done to you?” 

She turned. She looked up. 

“Who?” she asked, half knowing the answer, 
dreading it. 

“He did it!” shrieked the market-woman, 
pointing at Mustaffa Madani. “Your own 
father! May the Devil rip out his heart and 
feed it to a mangy pig!” 

* * * * 


Gouthia rose. 

She stared at her father. He stared back. 
Their implacable eyes met, contended. They 
were both of the Shareefs. Blood of his blood 
she was, and bone of his bone. 


174 


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Their eyes never dropped; never wavered. 
It was like a duel to the death between two 
evenly skilled fencers, handling evenly tem¬ 
pered blades. 

Then Gouthia spoke, in a flat, passionless 
voice: 

“You are no longer my father! Dead you 
are to me until you come to me and beg mine 
and my lover’s forgiveness on your knees!” 

She bent again over Hassan. 

“No!” she said to the orange-vendor who of¬ 
fered her his help. “He is mine, mine!” 

With all her young strength she pulled him 
up. She half carried, half dragged him away, 
panting a little, but with head erect, eyes blaz¬ 
ing, while the crowd made a path for her. She 
walked up to the mosque, the refuge of Islam. 
Just beyond the threshold she stopped; turned. 
Her arms were about Hassan, protectingly. 
His head was on her breast. His blood trick¬ 
led down, staining her dress. She stood there, 
superb, savage, with something so ominous in 
her pose that a hush seemed to fall over the 
hectic, whispering throng. 

A second passed; two; three. 

Then she spoke. 

“No longer my father—until you beg mine 


SHACKLED 


175 


and my lover’s forgiveness on your knees! No 
longer my father! I give oath before the 
Prophet—on Him the blessings!” 

* * * * 

He sat on the roof-top. His habitual, rather 
heavy serenity seemed restored to him. Only 
the veins on his temples were still swollen 

When he spoke to el-Fosiha who squatted in 
a comer, trembling, nervous, silent, staring at 
him, he did so with perfect composure: 

“Bring me my hasheesh pipe.” 

She obeyed. She was about to sit down 
again. 

“Go away!” he said. “Do not come unless 
I call you.” 

“But—you will have to have food . . .” 

“Do not come unless I call you,” he repeated, 
without raising his voice. 

She salaamed. 

“Listen is obey, Heaven-Born!” 

She left. 

* * * * 


He smoked. 

“No longer my father . . .” 


176 


SHACKLED 


The words seemed to come from very far. 
He listened to them, inclining his head, as with 
forced attention. 

His daughter’s voice. Distant and unearthly. 
Cruel. And so absurd. 

No longer her father? 

Why—she was his daughter. 

He loved her. . . . 

He smoked again. The hasheesh ghosts 
drew swiftly about him on silver grey wings, 
building around him a wall of fragrant, gos¬ 
samer clouds. 

Memories on the silver grey hasheesh 
wings. 

Memories following down the narrow span of 
years; back to the day when el-Fosiha had come 
from his wife’s bed and had laid a tiny bundle 
into his arms: 

“A daughter, my lord! May life be wide to 
her!” 

He remembered the first cry of that tiny, 
warm bundle. It had been like the morning 
cry of a wild bird. 

He remembered her last cry, cold, hard: 

“No longer my father!” 

He smoked again. 

He sat there on the roof-top until the sun died 


SHACKLED 


177 


in a sickly haze of coppery brown—decayed, it 
seemed, like the sun on the Day of Judgment— 
and the moon came up, stabbed on the outer 
horns of the world, dispassionate, calm, indif¬ 
ferent to the heart of man. 

He sat there, silent and stony, with a short, 
savage gesture at el-Fosiha who came up with 
food, that sent her scuttling down the stairs 
again, frightened, trembling, tripping on the 
last steps, falling with a great clatter of broken 
crockery. 

He sat there till the wind came driving the 
dusk toward the east; till the sky flushed with 
green, like a curved slab of thick, opaque jade; 
till the next day’s* sun glared hot and golden; 
till once more the mists of evening rose and 
coiled. 

The mists of evening—the mists in his own 
soul! 

He sat the next night through and watched 
the hiving stars swarm and swirl past the hori¬ 
zon. He watched them die, one by one. 

He watched young day shoot up, racing along 
the rim of the world in a sea of fire, with pur¬ 
ple shafts of light that put out the paling moon. 
He watched the east flush with pink and 
orange. 


178 


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The noises of waking day. 

Noises in the garden. A drowsy canticle. 
A bird was gurgling and twittering. A little 
furry bat cheeped dismally. A mousing owl 
rustled in the byre thatch. There was a metal¬ 
lic buzzing of flies around a puddle. 

Noises in the street. Seething in frothy, 
brutal streaks. The snarling whine of Jews 
bartering over infinitesimal values. The lout¬ 
ish speech of Bedawins. The high, clipped 
tenor of Arab street merchants. A southern 
black’s jungly cachinations. 

He did not hear. 

He watched a long streamer of north-bound 
birds, wild parrots tumbled out of their forest 
home by the wet sweep of the wind. They 
flopped about the lank palm trees, screeching 
uneasily, their motley finery bedraggled with 
drops of moisture. 

A scout bird detached itself, flew down, then 
up, flanking the packed crowd of its comrades 
in long, graceful evolutions, finally leading 
them toward the northern hills which etched the 
sky line, peaked and hooded, jeering like a 
face, extending their sombre, scarred walls like 
a grim jest hewn out of granite—evilly in¬ 
finite—a sooty smudge on the crimson and 


SHACKLED 


179 


gold blaze of day—like his thoughts ... his 
thoughts— 

The house under his feet. 

Hollow. Empty. 

Echoing memories. 

The patter of little hard heels tapping the 
stone flags. A child’s curly head, tinged with 
ruddy gold. A sturdy little body. 

His daughter. His child. His only child. 

Blood of his blood, and bone of his bone. 

And her childish laughter, years ago, when 
el-Fosiha had told her ancient fairy tales: of 
the flea who tried to lighten the camel’s load by 
jumping down; of Oguun, the patron Saint of 
little babes, whose fingers and toes were made 
of sugar cane and whose heart was a monstrous 
ball of pink sweetmeat baked in far China. . . . 

Other memories. 

Neighbors’ children, allowed to come in. 
Awed at first at the great, sombre Shareefian 
palace. Then forgetting their awe. Leaping. 
Dancing. Shouting. Laughing. Playing games. 

Playing “The Hen and the Chicken.” 

Gouthia the leader of the game. Always the 
leader. She was a Shareef. 

Another little girl—perhaps Sabha, the wa¬ 
ter carrier’s daughter—kneeling blindfolded, 


180 SHACKLED 

the children forming a circle about her, and 
Gouthia singing: 

“Beat the drum in the courtyard. 

But for the cat, the mice would eat us up— 

Root and branch— 

Stem and twig— 

Tree and leaf and flower! 

Beat the drum in the courtyard! 

For the father of Othman has come from the wars. 
The father of Othman brought back a treasure. 

The father of Othman has planted a garden— 

A green garden— 

A yellow garden— 

A red garden— 

A blue garden— 

A garden, silver and gold. 

The father of Othman has shouted his great war shout. 
And the wall of the garden fell from the shout. 

Beat the drum, the big drum, in the courtyard! 

And answer: 

What do you want— 

The hen or the chicken?” 

“The hen!” cried Sabha, the water carrier’s 
daughter. 

“Ouk — ouh — ouh!” Gouthia imitated ,the 
hen’s cackle; and then, all the other little 
girls crowding around and tickling Sabha’s 
back. . * . 


SHACKLED 


181 


And laughter. 

Childish laughter. 

Gouthia’s laughter, gurgling, high-pitched: 

"Hai! Hai! Hai!" 

He remembered her high, clear laugh. He 
remembered her last words, so cold, so hard: 

“No longer my father!” 

He heard them, from the distance. 

They tore his heart, ragged, paining, like a 
dull knife: 

“No longer my father!” 

And he sat there, hearing those words in his 
brain; hearing, that evening, triumphant yells 
drift up from the street: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

A flaring of torches, blending into a golden 
sea. A marriage procession. Shouts from 
the bazaar crowds: 

“Long life to the bridegroom!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“Who is he?” 

“Hassan, the dervish!” 

“Aye, 0 daughter of the milk-seller, and to¬ 
day he marries one of the lineage!” 

“Today he mates with a Shareef!” 


182 SHACKLED 

“May the Lord God strengthen his man¬ 
hood!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

Hassan, the dervish—thought Mustaffa Ma- 
dani. And Gouthia, his daughter. Little, little 
Gouthia. 

The wedding night. The wedding bed. 
Hassan’s body. His daughter’s body. To¬ 
gether. 

No, no, no! 

They were only the figments of dreams. 
Dreams which he hated and feared. Dreams 
which he must kill. 

With shaking fingers he filled his pipe. He 
lit it. He smoked. 

The roof-top disappeared. Dreams disap¬ 
peared. 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!”—from the street. 

Somebody else’s ears heard the shouts. Not 
his own ears. 

The facts of the outer world touched him no 
longer with their hard, cutting edges. These 
facts were untrue. They were not. They 
were only the lying thoughts of the lying 
world. . . . 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!”—from the street. . . . 


SHACKLED 


183 


* * * * 

They married according to the rites and 
pomp of Islam, the bride awaiting the bride¬ 
groom’s coming in the little house that he had 
rented not far from the Caravanserai of the Sa¬ 
haran Traders, he riding sheykh Abubekr 
Sabri’s blue-mottled stallion, two friends, 
young dervishes, at each side of the bridle, two 
more right and left having hold of the stirrups. 

He was dressed in a bright, scarlet burnoose 
and wore on his head a black fez with a long 
silver tassel. He had discarded his dervish 
costume. A bridegroom, he belonged no longer 
to the tekke of the Molawees. His face was 
swathed in bandages. 

46 A brave lad!” laughed one of the dervishes. 
“He fought for his bride like a Bedawin!” 

“Yes,” chimed in the second. “Who would 
have imagined that our Hassan is a warrior?” 

“Ah—a lion in Islam!” shouted one in the 
crowd. 

A long procession. The mullah , white- 
bearded, green-turbaned. Young men waving 
lanterns and tall poles decked with flowers and 
ribbons. Others carrying torches that flamed 
red and gold. Still others tossing .fireworks or 


184 


SHACKLED 


strewing floweis. Small boys running up and 
down the length of the procession and sprin¬ 
kling the bridegroom with rose water. Hired 
Jewish musicians—their services being among 
Abubekr Sabri’s wedding gifts—bringing up 
the rear with a tremendous din of reed pipes 
and flutes and cymbals and drums and 
tamborines. 

One of the dervishes raised his arms like a 
cheer leader. 

“A long life to the bridegroom!” he shouted. 
“Cry yoo-yoo-yoo, 0 Moslems!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” the sound was taken up in 
a quivering, bloating refrain. 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” the mullah himself echoed 
deep in his throat, forgetting his sacerdotal 
dignity. 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” shrieked the women, from 
behind their screened balconies, or rushing into 
the street, pressing flowers and sweets into Has- 
san’s hands, and showering benedictions upon 
him: 

“May the bride find your lips in spite of the 
bandages!” 

“May Allah grant strength to your loins and 
to her womb!” 


SHACKLED 


185 


“May she bear as many men-children as 
there are hairs on your head!” 

“May your deceased parents reach para¬ 
dise!” 

“Remember!” an old woman’s shamelessly 
practical advice. “Musk cut with amber to 
rouse the waning passion! A drop behind the 
ear!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“What sayeth the Koran? ‘Forgive thy wife 
seventy times a day!’ ” 

Laughter. 

More shouts: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

“A clever lad—this dervish! Throw him 
into the river—and he will rise with a fish in 
his mouth!” 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

Ban-ng went the crackers. Swish went the 
rockets. Swizz went the squibs. The street 
rushed with lights, scarlet-hearted, blue-tipped, 
yellow-frayed. 

The wedding cortege filed around the corner, 
the torches blending into the purple of the 
night, their sparks of red and gold and green 
softened to a running play of rainbow colors, 
then dying altogether with just a single high- 


m 


SHACKLED 


light still glistening, like the blood gleam in a 
black opal. 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo. . . .” very faintly from the 
distance, a mere memory of sound, while Has- 
san rode up to the little house near the Caravan¬ 
serai of the Saharan Traders, dismounted, and 
entered the bride’s room. 

* * * * 

She was waiting for him, sitting cross-legged 
on a low divan. She was veiled from head to 
foot. Beneath the veil, her face was painted 
and powdered in stark white and red. Her fin¬ 
ger and toe nails were stained red with henna; 
so were the palms of her hands and her heels. 

He salaamed. 

“Yah aini —0 eyes of my soul!” he said. 
“Yah amri —0 my life!” 

He lifted her veil. He kissed her lips. He 
bent and kissed her hands, her knees. 

“I love you!” he whispered. 

“And I love you!” 

* * * * 

Outside the little house, the crowd waited, 
eager, tense, expectant, but silent. The torches 


SHACKLED 


187 


were held down, pressed slightly against the 
moist ground so that there was hardly any light. 

The minutes passed slowly. 

Then a window opened. 

The crowd stirred, looked up, craning their 
necks. The torches were raised. They flared 
golden and yellow, bringing the scene into 
sharp relief. 

Hassan had stepped out. He stood there, on 
the narrow balcony. High in his hands, ac¬ 
cording to the immemorial Arab custom, he 
waved the bed sheet, spotted with blood. He 
waved it like a banner of victory. 

And again, from the street, immense, tri¬ 
umphant, almost hysterical, rose the shout: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

The crowd dispersed. 

Hassan returned to his wife. 

“I love you, love you, love you!” he said, 
taking her into his arms. “Daily my love for 
you echoes through the vaults of my life. 
Daily my love for you is born again—poignant, 
challenging, restless, eternally virginal. Daily 
the thought of you comes to me with flute songs 
and flowers. Daily I seek you. . . .” 

“Daily you shall find me, 0 my lord!” she 
said in a high, clear voice. 


188 


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H: * * * 

Early morning. A wedge of elfin light com¬ 
ing through the window. The gleam of her 
white shoulders. The flame of her curving 
body. The greatness of her soul. 

“Are you awake, dear?” 

“Yes, Hassan.” 

“Let us thank the Lord God! Let us recite 
the Fatihah together!” 

They rose. They knelt down side by side, 
heads touching the ground, hands outstretched. 

Their voices blended: 

“Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds! 

The Compassionate, the Merciful! 

King of the Day of Judgment! 

Thee we worship, and Thee we ask for help! 

Guide us in the straight path, 

The path of those to whom Thou art gracious, 

Not of those upon whom is Thy wrath 

Nor of the Erring!” 

* * * * 

A week passed. He turned to her with a 
question: 

“Are you happy, Gouthia?” 




SHACKLED 


189 


“More than happy, Hassan.” 

“More than happy?” 

“Yes. I feel . . She hesitated. 

“How?” 

“It is hard to express, Hassan.” 

“Try, dear!” 

“I feel—oh—right—just right!” Again she 
hesitated; slurred; found it difficult to choose 
words. “I—I am more sure. . . .” 

“More sure of what? Of me? Of your¬ 
self?” 

“No. Of—everything. Of Life. Life—it 
used to be two things: you and I. Now life is 
one thing—you—you know what I mean?” 

“Yes, heart of my heart.” 

* * * * 

They had no servants. He was too poor 
for it. 

He made a humble living as scholars do, 
teaching in sheykh Abubekr Sabri’s school for 
boys, penning letters for the illiterate, giving 
spiritual advice to men about to go on pilgrim¬ 
age to Mecca, writing out prayers and incanta¬ 
tions against sickness and the evil eye, and in¬ 
structing young theological students in the 


190 


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ground work of Islamic lore: the Nahw or 
syntax, the Fihh or law, the Hadith or table talk 
and traditions of the Prophet, and the Tafsir 
or exposition of the Koran. 

Besides—once a dervish, always a dervish. 
And since as a married man he could no longer 
belong to the Lodge of the Molawees, he joined 
another dervish Lodge: the Trikat-el-Moham - 
media, the Lodge of the Senussis, as foreigners 
call it. 

He was a mild and gentle man, yet of iron 
resolve and typically Semitic tenaciousness of 
purpose, and so he was happy in his new 
Lodge. For while the Senussis believed in the 
“ lmamat” a Moslem theocracy embracing all 
True Believers and were in consequence op¬ 
posed to secular government by foreign, Chris¬ 
tian nations, they wished for no bloodshed, no 
violence, no sudden revolution. They were in¬ 
telligent, slow, sincere, stubborn, and very 
peaceful, and to realize their political ambi¬ 
tions they preferred to advance carefully, war¬ 
ily, step by step, without evident force, without 
haste, without impatience—but also without 
compromise of any sort. Altogether Hassan 
could not have found a happier spiritual and 
intellectual milieu, and he used their tekke 


SHACKLED 


191 


as a place in which to carry on his work. 

He lived the life of the average Moslem. 
Outside his house, it was his brain, his mind, 
his intellect which ruled him; inside his house, 
once he had doffed his turban and changed his 
shoes for soft, yellow leather slippers, he was 
ruled by his soul, his heart, his body, his 
emotions. 

With marriage Gouthia gave up her 
studies; gave up all thought of becoming a 
teacher. 

Her work was now in the house. She 
cooked. She washed. She embroidered. She 
did everything. Rarely did they have enough 
money to hire a Saharan negress to come in for 
the heavy labor. 

So they both worked hard. But there was 
always laughter in the house. 

There was always the bloom of dreams. 

There was always their faith, their youth, 
their love. 


* * * * 

And summer passed and the short winter 
when the desert came into its own, with burning 
days and chilly nights that swept the yellow 


192 


SHACKLED 


sands into rigid, carved breadths, that covered 
the rock waste with its fitful, scraggly, tangled 
overgrowth of tamarack and drinn and dwarfed 
acacia, that crinkled the surface of the land into 
blanched hollows where the shadows danced a 
purple saraband. 

Then December came, bringing the beginning 
of the Saharan spring, with soft winds and blue 
lights and the melody of the young year, like 
a slow sob of melting harmonies. 

Out in the desert this was the time of the 
rahia, the short, sweet spring herbiage, with 
wild rape and sorrel and pimpernel giving 
green food and new life to the nomads’ small, 
parched cattle, bloating the camels’ dried ud¬ 
ders, stippling delicate pastel drops amidst the 
barren sandstone gravel, covering the shallow 
rock pools with a thin, silverish film of mois¬ 
ture, deepening the greenish black of the laurel 
wolds. 

Hero, in el-Korma, the palm trees were put¬ 
ting out their great spikes of green and their 
plumes of waxen, white blossoms. 

The days grew longer. 

The sky was tight, high-vaulted, of a milky, 
shimmering blue. 


SHACKLED 


193 


* * * * 

Never once during all those months did 
Gouthia speak of her father. 

Perhaps she had forgotten him. 

Perhaps she remembered to forget him every 
time she saw the ugly, red scar that twisted 
across her husband’s face from chin to temple. 

Hassan mentioned him once. 

He had been to see Abubekr Sabri, and the 
latter had quoted the Koran to him: 

“ ‘The Lord God loveth not the haughty and 
the unforgiving!’ said the Prophet—on Him 
peace! And did He not command the True 
Believers not to step haughtily? Did He not 
say that pride can neither cleave a rock nor 
cause man to equal the mountains in stature? 
And Jesus, the great Saint—on Him the salute! 
—did He not say to the doubter: ‘The world 
is but a bridge. Pass over it, but build no 
houses there. The world is but an hour. 
Spend it in devotion’. . . ? Come, my son—” 
kissing Hassan on both cheeks—“bury the old 
Adam. And consider—has not Mustaffa Ma- 
dani been punished by Fate itself?” 

“Yes,” admitted the other. 


194 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

For it was known to all el-Korma that the 
government had evicted the Shareef and had 
sold his house for taxes. 

The French, led by M. Esterneaux of the de¬ 
partment of interior revenue, resplendent in un¬ 
seasonable frock coat, correct silk hat with eight 
high-lights and vast tricolor sash accentuating 
his comfortable paunch, had brought a platoon 
of police, a half company of Chasseurs d’Af- 
rique and forty Zouaves, besides holding a 
company of Joyeux in reserve and placing ma¬ 
chine guns near the Mosque of the Five Swords, 
at the bazaar entrances, and at the corners of 
the rue de la Kasbah and the rue Sidi-Maknez. 

“Rather a ridiculous precaution, don’t you 
think?” a visiting Paris journalist had said to 
the governor-general. “Like shooting at a flea 
with a rifle. After all, that Shareef is only one 
man—with no servants except that old negress 
of his. He has no retainers, no adherents of 
any sort. He cannot offer armed resistance— 
and I understand that the natives do not exactly 
love him. . . .” 

“They do not. They dislike him,” Count de 
Lubersac-Crespigny had replied. 


SHACKLED 


195 


“Then why all this sabre rattling? Why all 
this glittering pomp and circumstance of war? 
Why do we French always behave like Prus¬ 
sians the moment we leave France? Why—if 
Paris hears of this, it will laugh itself sick— 
it may laugh loud and long enough to tear your 
official head from your official shoulders.” 

“Possibly. But I know what I am doing, 
monsieur ” had come the governor-general’s 
stilted reply. 

“Oh-?” 

“Yes.” 

“May I inquire-?” 

“These people are Arabs, Moslems. You 
can never be sure of them—their reasoning, 
their reactions, their psychology. When they 
see a Shareef, a descendant of the Prophet 
Mohammed, evicted by us, thrown into the 
street by foreigners, Frenchmen, Christians— 
well—they may laugh—on the other hand 
they may . . . They dislike Mustaffa Madani. 
Right. But they dislike us more. And in 
Islam revolutions happen rather suddenly. 
There is no warning. No crystallizing of pub¬ 
lic opinion. No preparation. A word. The 
point of a dagger. Bloodshed. Then panic— 
a whole city running amuck—I know . . .” 




196 


SHACKLED 


He had sighed reminiscently—“I was in Al¬ 
giers when Abu Bagdadi proclaimed jherid 
jahud, holy war. I was in Kairouan when the 
dervishes of the Brotherhood of Sidi Mo¬ 
hammed Tidjini declared that a Moulay Saa, a 
Messiah, had appeared! Each time the storm 
was upon us suddenly. No warning.” 

“You suffer from too much imagination. 
That’s the whole trouble with you.” 

“I am usually accused of having too little 
imagination, monsieur .” 

“At all events it will be interesting,” the 
journalist had replied. “I shall go and watch 
the circus.” 

But he had been disappointed. 

Crowds of Arabs had come, expectant, eager, 
tense, whispering in gliding undertones. Per¬ 
haps, at a word from Mustaffa Madani, in spite 
of their dislike of him and in spite of soldiers 
and machine guns, they might have made trou¬ 
ble. But the Shareef had been quite peaceful. 
He had offered no resistance. 

In response to M. Esterneaux’ challenge, he 
had come to the outer gate. Without a word, 
without a gesture, he had listened to the pomp¬ 
ous, legal order of eviction. He had stared at 


SHACKLED 


197 


the Frenchman with a mask-like face that had 
held the coldness of death, cloaking whatever 
fury or sense of outrage had been in him. 

Only when, followed by el-Fosiha, he had 
stepped across the threshold of his house—his 
house no longer—he had spoken to M. Ester- 
neaux, in French: 

“So the house has been sold, eh?” 

“Yes, monsieur .” 

“Who bought it?” 

“One Moses Maimonides.” 

And Mustaffa Madani had broken into a roar 
of laughter. 

“Laughter,” the Paris journalist had de¬ 
scribed it in his article to his home paper, “that 
fell like a blight. Guttural laughter that rose 
and peaked and spread, until it seemed that the 
town of el-Korma, the houses, the mosques, the 
bazaars, the creeping, squatting desert, the 
hills, were echoing the sound of it. Laughter 
that shook the furry palms, that made the flow¬ 
ering creepers shed their spikes. Laughter 
that shivered the tufted grass in the neglected 
garden, that caused the driver-ants to roll them¬ 
selves into tight, pinkish-grey, unobtrusive 
balls, that sent the tiny scorpions scurrying for 


198 


SHACKLED 


cover . Laughter as if at a joke hatched in 
hell . . ” 

Thus the Paris journalist. But then he had 
imagination. That’s how he made his living. 

* * * * 

So Mustaffa Madani had left the house of his 
ancestors. Accompanied by el-Fosiha, he had 
gone to the only place left him, the miserable, 
stony little patch of olive trees on the outskirts 
of town where the two lived in a small building 
that was no more than a mud-chinked hut. 

* * * * 

“Has not Mustaffa Madani been punished by 
Fate itself?” repeated Abubekr Sabri. 

“Yes,” admitted Hassan. 

The other sighed. 

“Allah alone knoweth how he lives,” he con¬ 
tinued. “I offered him tenderness. I offered 
him help. I offered him money and a home. 
But he will not talk to me—and I am his best 
friend. Belike he blames me because it was I 
who brought you into his house, his life. I 


SHACKLED 


199 


saw him only once—and how he has changed, 
Hassan! Allah, Allah—I cry Thee mercy!” 

* * * * 

He described to Hassan the ramshackle hut 
with the single, broken window and the bough 
of an olive tree lashing heavily against it in 
the desert blast; el-Fosiha squatting over a tiny, 
open charcoal fire, keeping it alive with all the 
strength of her old lungs; the wretched food on 
the table, a handful of shriveled olives and a 
bowl of cooked barley; the appalling dirt; and 
Mustaffa Madani sitting there on the threshold, 
staring, brooding, no longer the well-fleshed, 
careless giant, but grey-faced, sunk into him¬ 
self, the skin on his throat hanging loose and 
flabby and the eyes red rimmed—“like those of 
a hasheesh smoker, Hassan, and indeed el- 
Fosiha whispered to me that the only thing he 
brought from the house was a large ball of the 
wretched drug”—and his soul no longer finely 
tempered and stoutly braced. 

“When he saw me,” the sheykh went on, “he 
closed his eyes, as if unable to bear the sight 
of me, as if I recalled to his mind all the dread- 


200 


SHACKLED 


ful, recent happenings. I offered him help, 
money, a home, and he said No—‘No! No! 
No!’—over and over—and there was no argu¬ 
ing. There was no budging him. I spoke of 
Gouthia. He looked at me hard-eyed. ‘For¬ 
give her,’ I pleaded. He shook his head. 
‘She is fully as guilty as her lover,’ he replied. 
‘I know her no more. If my right hand of¬ 
fends me I cut it off.’ ‘And if your heart of¬ 
fends you,’ I said to him, ‘would you cut it out 
—and die? Gouthia is your heart, Sidi!’ I 
tried to reason with him, and suddenly he 
turned on me. Allah—I thought for a mo¬ 
ment that he was going to strike me. ‘God’s 
curse on you!’ he cried. But he controlled him¬ 
self almost at once. He regained his manners. 
He salaamed. He begged my pardon. ‘We 
will not throw stones at one another,’ he said. 
‘We are too old friends for that. But, Sabri 
effendi, if you love me come no more to see me. 
For I suffer!’ Those were his last words, Has- 
san—‘I suffer!’—And you know his harsh, 
unyielding soul—‘I suffer—’ ” 

Hassan was silent. 

“There is no hate against him in my heart,” 
he replied after a while. “But what can I do?” 


SHACKLED 


201 


“You? Personally? Nothing.” 

“I am willing to go to him—to talk to 
him . . 

“No, no!” exclaimed Abubekr Sabri. “This 
time he will kill you.” 

“Well—then—what can I do? I don’t see 
how .. . .” 

“There’s your wife-” 

“Gouthia-?” 

“Yes. She must go to him. She must im¬ 
plore his forgiveness.” 

Hassan shook his head. 

“She never mentions him,” he said. “She, 
too, is a Shareef.” 

“A hard, hard breed,” sighed Abubekr Sa¬ 
bri. “Like stone. And yet—perhaps we need 
them in Islam. Of late I have thought that 
perhaps you and I are not hard enough—to 
cope with these Christians, these foreigners 
who . . He interrupted himself; jerked 
back his thoughts. “Yes. Gouthia must go to 
him.” 

“She will not do so. I know her.” 

“But she loves you, Hassan. She will do it 
for love of you. Speak to her. Beg her . . 

“I shall try,” replied Hassan. 




202 


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* * * * 

He did so that night on his return from the 
tekke of the Senussis. 

“I spoke today to the sheykh Abubekr Sabri, 
Gouthia.” 

“How is he?” 

“He mentioned your father. He said . . 

“I have no father,” she interrupted him. 

“Listen, dear . . .” 

“An orphan, I came to you.” 

“Gouthia—please—listen to me! The sheykh 
told me that your father . . .” 

“My father is dead.” 

Her voice was hard and level and passion¬ 
less. There was not even the faintest echo of a 
conflict within herself. Her lips neither tight¬ 
ened nor trembled. A perfect, terrible candor 
was in her brown eyes so that they appeared 
flat, almost expressionless. There was not a 
single one of her features, there seemed not a 
single corner of her soul, through which doubt, 
misgiving, emotion of any sort may have trav¬ 
ersed and left its mark. Unflinching she 
was; relentless; inexorable. A Shareef—Has- 
san said to himself—a conservative, of that 
implacable breed whose own soul is the only 


SHACKLED 


203 


gauge they have for others, whose own pride is 
the only touchstone they have for others; and he 
thought—was frightened at the thought, re¬ 
jected it immediately—how he could hate her 
if he did not happen to love her. If only she 
had one little tremor of weakness—one single 
fissure in her armor through which a shaft 
might pass . . . 

He sighed. 

“You are—oh—a little unhuman, best be¬ 
loved!” he said. 

“Am I? And yet I love you. . . .” 

“Yes—you do love me!” He thought of 
Abubekr Sabri’s words. “And just because 
you love me—please . . .” 

“There is kous-kous for dinner tonight,” she 
said casually, “and your favorite wheat pilaff 
with raisins and pistache nuts. And, Hassan 
dear, run to the bazaar. I forgot to buy coffee. 
And perhaps a little bag of French sweets—if 
your pupils paid you well today. . . .” 

And she went into the kitchen. 

* * * * 

It was on the following afternoon, a Friday, 
while Hassan was at prayer in the Mosque of 


204 


SHACKLED 


the Five Swords, that el-Fosiha came to the 
little house near the Caravanserai of the Sa¬ 
haran Traders. 

According to the custom of Islam when en¬ 
tering a friend’s house, she opened the door 
without knocking. 

She salaamed. 

“May the Lord God lead you, Gouthia!” she 
said. 


* * * * 

Gouthia had been busy with wooden pestle 
and bowl, pounding white Moroccan figs, wild 
honey and anis seeds into paste. She looked 
up, startled. Then, as her father had done 
when he had seen Abubekr Sabri, she closed her 
eyes momentarily, as if unable to bear the 
sight of her, as if el-Fosiha recalled to her mind 
the dreadful, recent happenings. 

She pulled herself together. 

She walked up to the old negress. She 
kissed her tenderly. 

“I am happy to see you, nurse,” she said. 

“And I, too—” the old negress’ voice shiv¬ 
ered—“I am happy—so happy, little, little 
soul!” 


SHACKLED 


205 


El-Fosiha burst into tears; and Gouthia, all 
her old love for the other returning with a 
sweet, wild rush, put her arms about her. 

“Please—please—” she begged—“you must 
not cry! No, no . . 

“How can I help it? After all these long 
months—” el-Fosiha smiled through her tears. 
She dried her eyes with the edge of her bur¬ 
noose. “But never mind about me,” she went 
on. “I came to speak to you of . . .” 

“You may speak to me of anything and 
everything,” cut in Gouthia with flat, chilly 
words, “except of him who was once my 
father.” 

“Child!” exclaimed the other with agonized 
entreaty. “Listen to me . . .” 

“Allah may forgive him. Not I.” 

“You do not mean it!” 

“I do! Never, never, never shall I forgive 
him—not until he implores mine and Hassan’s 
forgiveness on his knees!” 

“You do not mean it! You cannot!” 

“I do!” came the calm, even voice of justice. 

She rose. She looked curiously tall and 
strong in the level shafts of the falling sun 
that danced through the window with purple 
shadows. 


206 SHACKLED 

“Gouthia—” implored el-Fosiha—“remem¬ 
ber—your father is . . 

“What?” 

“Old—old! And poor . . ” 

“And I am young and poor!” 

“He is your father!” 

“No longer! He was my father—I was his 
daughter! Pah—the young ravens are beaked 
like the old!” 

“He is a Shareef, child! He is of the 
lineage!” 

“And-?” 

“There are his ancient rights and privileges. 
He is his own law.” 

“Am I less a Shareef than he? Am I less of 
the lineage than he? Does his pride surpass 
my pride, his privileges my privileges? His 
laws are his own, you say? Good—by the face 
of God—so are my laws mine own laws.” 

“But he is a man, Gouthia.” 

“What of it?” 

“It is hard for us women at times to judge a 
man.” 

“And I am a woman. Then let no man 
judge me.” 

“Man,” said the old negress, shocked to the 
core by such heresy, “is creation.” 



SHACKLED 


207 


“Is he indeed?” 

“Yes.” 

Gouthia laughed. There was challenge in 
her eyes, and proud assurance. 

“And yet,” she said, “it is myself who this day 
feel in my heart the stir and rustle of creation— 
like little wings—like soft hands beating gently, 
gently beneath my heart . . .” 

“You—oh—?” el-Fosiha stammered; sud¬ 
denly understood: “You are pregnant?” 

“Yes. Before the end of spring—Allah will¬ 
ing—I shall bear a child to my lord!” 

“May Allah give you good chance! May 
it be a man-child!” 

* * * * 

The old negress salaamed, awed by the eternal 
feminine mystery of conception and birth. 

She threw herself on the floor, touching it 
with forehead and flat palms, facing the east. 

“Praised be the name of the Lord, the Most 
High,” she prayed, “who hath made and com¬ 
pletely formed his creatures, and who determin¬ 
ed! them to various ends, and directeth them 
to attain the same, and who produceth the pas¬ 
ture for cattle and fields for grain and the trees 


208 SHACKLED 

for various fruits, and man and woman for the 
creating of children!” 

She rose. 

She snapped her fingers rapidly to ward off 
the winds of misfortune. Her wrinkled, plum 
colored features spread into a wide, toothless 
grin. The grin expanded into a laugh, tri¬ 
umphant, high, shrill; the laugh into a throaty, 
quivering cry of joy: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo! Yoo-yoo-yoo! Yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

She knelt before Gouthia. She covered her 
hands and knees with quick, bird-like kisses. 

“Aye, by God, the Holder of the Scales of 
Law with the Strength of His Hands!” she ex¬ 
claimed. “Let it be a man-child, a twirler of 
steel, a breaker of stones, a proud stepper in 
the councils of fightingmen! Allah, Allah— 
give Thou to this Moslema a little son, to com¬ 
plete the house, to give meaning and strength 
to her life! A man-child, 0 Allah, I pray 
Thee! A man-child, broad-bodied and without 
a blemish!” 

Again she broke into a quivering, throaty: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo-yoo!” 

She laughed and cried at the same time. 

“Gouthia,” she went on, “just because of the 
child to come—the little son to come—go to 


SHACKLED 


209 


your father—the child’s grandfather. . . .” 

“Just because of the child to come shall I 
steel my will,” Gouthia replied. “Child of 
mine? Yes. But child, too, of my husband, 
my lord, him whom he who was once my fa¬ 
ther insulted most foully and beat most bru¬ 
tally—whom he kicked from the door, nearly 
killing him, scarring his beloved face. No, no, 
el-Fosiha. I have given oath to the Prophet 
Mohammed—on Him the salute!” 

* * * * 

The negress sighed. She bowed her head. 

She knew the breed—bitter, proud, unyield¬ 
ing, ruthless. 

“It is the Lord God’s will,” she mumbled 
with weak resignation. 

Then she fell to talking of intimate things. 

“I myself have borne eight children, Gou¬ 
thia,” she said, “not counting the twins which 
I bore your father. Twenty-seven times was I 
a grandmother, and nine times a greatgrand¬ 
mother. I know all about it. . . .” 

“Hassan spoke of a French doctor who . . 

“Cursed be all doctors! Chiefly French doc¬ 
tors! All they want is to touch a woman’s 


210 


SHACKLED 


body with their greedy fingers—and, besides, 
get paid for it! And a French doctor—a for¬ 
eigner, an unbeliever—to see you naked— j 
child—have you lost your mind-?” 

“Hassan says that . . .” 

“The Lord His mercy! Hassan is a man. 
Thus a fool. Nine times was I a greatgrand¬ 
mother! Will your Hassan teach me how to 
bear children? You listen to me! First of all 
—have you a hijab?" 

“A hijab —an amulet?” asked Gouthia. 
“What for?” 

“Then you haven’t one?” 

“No!” 

“Allah!” exclaimed the negress. “It is 
lucky for you that I came here today. Almost 
a sending of providence! A child in your 
womb—and no hijab about your neck! And 
you claim to be a grown-up woman—and your 
husband claims to be a dervish, a learned man! 
And—Allah, Allah!—you have no hijab /” 

“But what do I want it for?” 

“If you do not wear one, your child will be 
bom head first and will, therefore, be a mur¬ 
derer some day. It is an assured thing. We 
must have one made immediately. I know a 
Moghrareba, a western Moorish woman, who 



SHACKLED 


211 


will write you out the proper sort. For seven 
days you must wear it next to your heart, then 
dissolve the ink in water and drink it. And— 
the diet . . .” 

“Yes?” 

“You must not drink buttermilk.” 

“I am fond of buttermilk.” 

“Drink it—and you will curdle your child’s 
brain! It will be insane! No. No buttermilk. 
Not a drop. But lots of fish sherbet to cool 
the blood and lessen the pain, and leeches on 
your back once a month, and plenty of herb 
tea made of sweet-smelling al-shay grass to oil 
the womb and make the birth easy. And—” 
warming to her subject—“cut three hairs from 
your husband’s beard and three nail parings 
from his fingers and pluck three feathers from 
a live, white rooster’s tail, and carry it all in a 
bag night and day, if you desire a son. And 
wear blue next to your skin to draw off the heat 
of the world. And sleep facing the east, and 
let not the full moon fall on your face. And 
cook your breakfast every morning on a fire 
made of dried donkey dung—no, no—do not 
laugh, child—this is very important, unless you 
want your child to be a cripple! And the horo¬ 
scope for the child—” she went on feverishly— 


212 


SHACKLED 


“I shall cast the horoscope myself, tonight, at 
sundown. There is not much time to be lost. 
Quick! Ala math iddy —give me something 
that you have touched, something from the salt 
of your hands to the salt of my hands—to make 
the auspices right. Yes—a handkerchief— 
that will do! And remember—no buttermilk! 
And plenty of fish sherbet! The salute! The 
salute!” 

And she swept from the room like a small, 
plum colored whirlwind, and hurried back to 
the hut on the outskirts of el-Korma. 

* * * * 

There, gathering a handful of sand, stirring 
it with a stick, dropping the white of an egg 
on it and watching how it curdled, she read the 
horoscope, calling upon Allah and the Prophet, 
upon Moses and Jesus and Abraham and Jacob, 
upon the Angels of the Left Hand and those of 
the Right Hand, upon the Twelve Imams, the 
fourteen Holy Innocents, the forty Abdals, and 
the forty-seven True Saints; calling too—if the 
truth be told, and since there was no Moslem 
priest near to threaten her with hell fire—upon 


SHACKLED 


213 


the ancient African voodoo gods and fetishes 
of her youth. 

And thus Mustaffa Madani found her when 
he returned late that evening. 

* * * * 

He had been in the desert, far out, away 
from the caravan trail; and, somehow, he had 
imagined that the desert, so motionless and un¬ 
changing behind its shifting veil of sand, was 
staring at him, was trying to speak to him with 
a terrific language of reproach and mockery. 

He had closed the shutters of his soul; had 
carefully fastened them with the stubbornness 
of his pride. 

There had been no sound except, once, the 
cry of a carrion-hawk, poised high on quivering 
wings. 

Slowly the sun had climbed down the hori¬ 
zon, softening the blue sky lane for the coming 
of the stars, its dying rays coiling among the 
glittering quartz grains of the desert like col¬ 
ored snakes. 

And he had sat there, silent and stony, try¬ 
ing not to think, trying not to feel, until gradu- 



214 


SHACKLED 


ally, for the first time since Gouthia had left 
him, peace had stolen over him—peace of not 
thinking, not feeling, almost not living—peace 
of the desert—silence in the desert—silence in 
his tortured soul. 

Numbed, his soul. Inert. Torpid. 

Yet, though numbed and inert and torpid, his 
soul had seemed free again, free of the past, 
free of pain and the remembrance of pain, free 
as a summer morning upon windy, green fields 
—when, from very far at first, but distinct in 
the whelming, swathing stillness, a voice had 
drifted to his ears, shivering the silence in the 
desert, shivering the silence in his soul. 

A chanting voice, with a nasal, trembling, 
throaty note of religious hysteria . . . coming 
steadily nearer: 

“When the sun shall be wrapped up, 

And when the stars shall tumble down, 

And when the mountains shall be powdered to dust, 
And when the ten-months camels shall be neglected, 
And when the wild beasts shall be huddled to¬ 
gether. . . .” 


nearer, ever nearer— 

“And when souls shall be joined to their dead bodies, 
And when the Books shall be laid open, 


SHACKLED 


215 


And when the sky shall be peeled off. 

And when Hell shall be set a-blaze, 

And when Paradise shall be brought near, 

Then the soul shall know what it hath wrought. . . 

The chanting had become quite clear. The 
singer had appeared around the corner of a 
chalk rock, tall, emaciated, dressed in rags, 
bare-headed, wild-eyed. 

Mustaffa Madani had recognized him: One 
Abeydillah el-Musselmanny, a Jew turned Mos¬ 
lem for love of woman, who, for love and 
jealousy of the same woman, had committed 
murder, had been in prison nearly twenty years, 
had come out of prison as he was today—a re¬ 
ligious fanatic, wandering all over Tunis, here 
today and there tomorrow, chanting his hysteri¬ 
cal prayers—an insane man, thus beloved by 
Allah, sacrosanct, safe wherever he went— 
whom none may ask ‘‘Whence dost thou come?” 
or “Whither dost thou go?” 

He had seen Mustaffa Madani; had stood 
still; had looked at the other as if considering. 

“You—” he had asked, a clear cell in his 
sick, clogged brain seeking remembrance— 
“you are the Shareef—the Shareef who . . .” 

“Yes.” 

“Ho!” Suddenly ALeydillah el-Mussel- 


216 


SHACKLED 


manny had broken into maniacal laughter; had 
repeated over and over again, like the response 
in some satanic litany: “Then the soul shall 
know what it hath wrought —hay ah, hay ah, 
hay ah !—the soul shall know what it hath 
wrought. . . 

He had danced there in his mad way before 
Mustaffa Madani, with mincing steps, gro¬ 
tesque, ludicrous; lifting his burnoose, show¬ 
ing his filth-covered nakedness, gesturing ob¬ 
scenely; twisting, whirling, tripping; had 
turned on his heel with a pirouette like a bal¬ 
lerina; had danced away into the desert, still 
chanting his hysterical prayers: 


“And I swear by the stars that hide, 
That move swiftly and hide, 

And by the darkening night, 

And by the breath of dawn. . . .” 


—decreasing—and very faintly, from afar: 

Nor is mine the speech of a pelted devil! 
Then whither go ye? 

Whither goeth your soul, 

Except where Allah commandeth, 

The Lord of the World. . . ” 


SHACKLED 


217 


—the voice had drifted away, swallowed by 
the golden, coiling sands; and a shiver had run 
over Mustaffa Madani; a great turmoil had 
surged through him, beyond control, beyond 
prayer, beyond his pride even, running into 
something molten and liquid that invaded every 
corner of his being, finally emerging, as from 
a mold, into the solid fact of his grief, his lone¬ 
liness; and he had shrugged his shoulders 
hopelessly. 

He had gone home. 

* * * * 

“What devil’s devicing are you doing there— 
mumbling to yourself and burning filth like an 
old witch?” 

His voice startled el-Fosiha. She had not 
heard his approach. 

“I am casting a horoscope,” she replied, the 
suddenness of the question forcing the truth 
from her, “reading the future, Sidi.” 

He laughed. 

“Hm—” he sneered—“I know what the fu¬ 
ture holds for you and me.” 

“Allah will take care of mine,” she replied 
boldly, “and Shaitan, the Devil, the Stoned, 


218 


SHACKLED 


will take care of yours belike. I am reading 
the future of one yet unborn.” 

“Whose?” 

“That of your grandchild.” 

“Eh-?” He was startled; stared at her, 

wild-eyed. 

“Yes!” el-Fosiha continued. “The little 
child which Gouthia, your daughter, will bear 
to her husband—may it be a man-child!” 

“Glory be to the Most High who . . The 
words bubbled to his lips while a deep glow 
warmed his soul. 

But, almost immediately, he cut them off, in 
mid-air. His lips froze into a thin, hard line. 

“I have no daughter,” he said. 

“A lie! A wicked, putrid, stinking, black 
lie, 0 creature!” shrieked the old negress. 
“You have a daughter—and a son-in-law and 
soon—with Allah’s help—a little grandson!” 

She cowered as Mustaffa Madani raised his 
hands in a threatening gesture. Then she 
reached up to him and embraced his knees 
when, suddenly, he collapsed into a chair, great 
sobs racking his frame. 

“Heaven-Born!” she cried. “Please—oh . . .” 

He did not reply. He was thinking of his 
life, of Gouthia’s life, again as on that day 


SHACKLED 


219 


when she had left him, following it back through 
the years, to the day when el-Fosiha had come 
from his wife’s bed and had laid a tiny bundle 
into his arms: 

“A daughter, my lord! May life be wide 
to her!” 

The first cry of that tiny, warm bundle. 
Like the morning cry of a wild bird. 

Her last cry, cold, hard, on the threshold of 
the Mosque of the Five Swords: 

“No longer my father!” 

* * * * 

“I have no daughter,” he repeated, “I have 
nothing—nothing . . .” 

He looked into the shadows with a steady 
stare, dreadful, unblinking as an image of 
stone. 

Then, very quickly, as though obeying a sud¬ 
den thought, he went to the door and stepped 
out into the night. 

El-Fosiha ran after him. 

“Where are you going?” she cried. 

He did not answer. She peered from the 
threshold, calling again. She saw no sight of 
him. The night had swallowed him. 


220 


SHACKLED 


There was nothing out there except the black, 
scarred countenance of the desert, immense, 
lonely. There was no sound except, far off, 
the yelp of a jackal that crossed the waste, 
swiftly, greyly, like an evil thought. 

* * * * 

On that night, as on all nights, there was in 
the tehke of the Molawee dervishes the dron¬ 
ing of music, melancholy, in a minor key, then 
peaking up into a shriek, again dying away into 
minor, sobbing cadences. 

Sheykh Abubekr Sabri sat cross-legged on a 
mat at the farther end. He seemed like a 
golden idol, his body rigid, only his hands wav¬ 
ing slowly to and fro as if making hypnotic 
passes. 

He was chanting in a low, clear voice: 

66 Allahoo! Allahoo! Allahoo!” while the 
dervishes whirled in a circle, with arms straight 
out, the palms of the right hands turned up, 
those of the left turned down, all gyrating at 
different speeds, yet in obedience to the staccato 
thump of the drums. 

Their skirts stood out like huge, white 
wheels. Their bare, sweat-drenched heels 


SHACKLED 


221 


made a hissing sound as they tapped the floor. 

66 Allah akbar!” 

“W’ellah!” 

“Ah Villahr , 

they cried, some moving like rapidly spinning 
tops, with eyes wide open, faces tortured into 
hysterical grimaces, others turning slowly and 
delicately, with closed eyes, a dreamy smile 
on their lips. 

The swing of the dance increased gradually. 
The cries rose and bloated. The music droned. 

The sheykh Abubekr Sabri, staring with hyp¬ 
notic eyes, guided the dancers with the move¬ 
ments of his hands and the telepathic strength 
of his mind. 

The scented incense smoke swirled up, wav¬ 
ering and glimmering like molten gold, blaz¬ 
ing with the deep, transparent yellows of amber 
and topaz, blending through a stark, crimson in¬ 
candescence into metallic blue, then trembling 
into jasper and opal flames. It poured through 
the tekke until everything seemed veiled, un¬ 
real—the devotees, the sheykh, and the specta¬ 
tors who crowded a narrow platform that was 
separated from the dancers by a low, wooden 
railing. 

Amongst them, watching fascinatedly, nerves 


222 


SHACKLED 


tense and quivering, was Mustaffa Madani. 

He had come here on an impulse; more than 
an impulse; rather as if obeying a mysterious 
command that had spoken to him across the 
distance, out of the night, out of the nowhere, 
with a great whirring of wings—like the wings 
of a soul, his own soul, tortured, agonized, suf¬ 
fering, trying to escape the cage of the flesh. 
Not that he had put it so to himself. For he 
was not an Occidental. Thus he was not given 
to psychic, or even to intellectual, acrobatics. 
Perhaps he was too simple for it; perhaps he 
was too stupid. But sitting there in his hut, 
with el-Fosiha mumbling about the past, think¬ 
ing that he had lost his daughter, that he had 
lost his grandchild yet unborn, that he had lost 
everything, that he had nothing left him in all 
the world, suddenly he had felt immense sound 
vibrations filling the room, the air, the cavity 
between his eyes and his brain. These vibra¬ 
tions—felt, not heard—had seemed to drift 
from very far, rising and falling in a regular 
pulse, in great, rhythmical waves; touching his 
heart with huge, elemental hands; stealing upon 
his astral self with a dimly prophetic sense; 
stirring the inexhaustible and mysterious re- 


SHACKLED 


223 


gions beneath the surface of his soul. He had 
become aware of enormous, muting, cosmic 
forces hovering about him, drawing him on and 
away. The vibrations had gradually increased 
in volume, had swollen to a pouring, singing 
flood, appalling, awesome, yet infinitely tender, 
like the voices of little children; filled, some¬ 
how, with stars, with blue, hazy distances, with 
flowers and trees, with a clean space and 
breadth of air, with the sweep and breath of 
nature; with an intricate pattern of voices that 
merged at its centre into a central harmony. 
He had been unable to tell if they were the 
resonances of human voices or of the desert 
wind. But there had been at their core, 
vaguely, as the memory of the dervish chant: 
“Allahoo! Allahoo!” and they had been com¬ 
pelling, irresistible. They had pulled him 
from his chair, across the threshold, out into 
the night. 

El-Korma—though he had hardly noticed it, 
had crossed it like a man in a dream—had 
come to him as often before, with a rush of 
purple and black, with lamps glimmering in 
posterns, red, golden-tipped, with night prowl¬ 
ers and the whining of beggars and the acrid 


224 


SHACKLED 


smell of the gutters; and steadily the compel¬ 
ling sound vibrations had increased, urging him 
on, until he had found himself here, in the 
tekke of the Molawees, staring through the 
incense smoke into the sheykh’s hypnotic 
eyes. 


* * * * 

The sheykh’s eyes stared back. 

“I have commanded!” said the eyes. “You 
have heard! You have obeyed! You have 
come! Allahoo!” 

Mustaffa Madani wondered if it was the clog¬ 
ging aroma of the incense working on his 
nerves. But, somehow, he felt as if a released 
projection of Abubekr Sabri’s consciousness 
were flowing out to meet his. 

“You have come!” said the sheykh’s eyes. 
“Allahoo!” 

“Allahoo!” the sheykh’s lips formed the 
word; tossed it free. 

“Allahoo! Allahoo!” echoed the dervishes, 
whirling away in a great wind, while again, as 
on that day when Abubekr Sabri had inter¬ 
preted to him for the first time the esoteric mys¬ 
tery and rites of the Molawees, Mustaffa Ma- 


SHACKLED 


225 


dani was conscious of the overpowering spell of 
it enveloping him, breaking down his will. 

* * * * 

Next to him, on the spectators’ platform, 
stood a very old Arab, trembling in every limb, 
tears running down his wrinkled, berry-brown 
cheeks, mumbling with toothless gums: 

“0 Allah! 0 Lord of Daybreak! Protect 
me against the blackness of the night when it 
overtaketh me!” 

“Allahoo!” cried the dervishes. “Allahoo!” 

They whirled away. The music droned. 

Another spectator, an enormous Saharan 
negro, jumped up and down like one possessed, 
foam on his lips, his yellowish eyes rolling in 
hysterical frenzy. 

“The Smiting!” he yelled. “What is the 
Smiting?” 

And, from a dozen lips, came the Koranic 
prophecy: 

“The Smiting! What is the Smiting? 

And what shall teach thee what the Smiting is? 

The Day when men shall be like scattered moths, 

And the mountains like carded wool! 

Then as for him whose scales are heavy— 


226 


SHACKLED 


His shall be a life well-pleasing. 

And as for him whose scales are light— 

His abode shall be the bottomless Pit. . . .” 

“0 Allah!” rose the old Arab’s quivering, 
ludicrous falsetto. “I cry Thee Mercy! I cry 
Thee help!” 

“Hie ye to repentance!” yelled the negro, 
jumping up and down, so that the boards 
creaked and protested, threatening to break. 
“Hie ye to salvation, 0 Moslems! One the 
God is!” 

The music droned. 

“Allahoo!” 

The Molawees whirled—whirled away . . . 

“ Allahoo!” 

“Allahoor 


* * * * 

A quiver of excitement ran through Mustaffa 
Madani. It touched his soul, electrifying him. 
It touched, too, his body, with an immense sex¬ 
ual elation. He felt as he had on that day, 
many years earlier—he had been a boy of 
twelve—when for the first time in his life he 
had felt the touch of a woman’s body, a worn- 


SHACKLED 


227 


an’s passion, his own passion. And, quite sud¬ 
denly, he understood that here, in the whirling, 
cosmic dance before Allah’s seven-stepped 
throne, was a tremendous secret and goal, more 
important than mere individual life, than pride 
of race and blood, more important even than 
love or grief or hate. 

He rose. He cleared the wooden railing of 
the platform. 

He jumped into the centre of the floor. 

He heard his own voice coming harsh and 
grating and guttural as from across illimitable 
distance: 

“Allahoo! Allahoo! Allahoo!" 

He felt himself spinning away, swaying, gy¬ 
rating. He was aware of no giddiness; no bod¬ 
ily sensation now of any sort. 

But, deep in his being, he was conscious of a 
huge elation, half spiritual, half sensuous. 

The reed-pipes shrilled. The drums beat. 
The incense rose in a scented, opalescent 
cloud . . . 

And, the next day, in the Bazaar of the 
Mutton-Butchers where she had gone to buy 
meat for her dinner, Gouthia overheard two 
shop keepers’ conversation: 

“Have you heard the news?” 


228 


SHACKLED 


“Your wife has three new lovers? The Bey 
effendi’s pet chicken has given birth to an 
elephant?” 

“No, no. Real news. Mustaffa Madani— 
the Shareef—you remember . . .?” 

Gouthia stopped. She listened. Her heart 
beat a little faster. 

“Assuredly I remember him,” replied the 
other. “A haughty man who considers the 
strings of his cotton drawers equal in splendor 
to the Bey effendi’s breeches of state!” 

“Haughty no longer!” 

“He must be dead!” 

“No. He has become a man of God.” 

“He has?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Wah! Then there is hope for the Devil 
himself.” 

“It is true though. Mustaffa Madani has 
joined the Molawee dervishes.” 

“Impossible! Can a frog catch cold?” 

“I saw him whirl in the dance. By the 
honor of my neck—I saw him with these eyes.” 

“Really?” 

“Yes.” 

“Oh well—God is Most Great!” 

“Indeed. He is the One God!” 


SHACKLED 


229 


* * * * 

Gouthia went home. 

She felt strangely disturbed. Her heart 
hurt, almost as if somebody had squeezed and 
bruised it. 

She was on the point of telling her husband; 
less because of the news—he would hear it soon 
enough, in the gliding gossip of bazaar and 
marketplace, or in the unctuous, episcopal gos¬ 
sip of the tekke of the Senussi dervishes—than 
because of the longing and regret in her soul. 
This longing and regret she was unable to sub¬ 
due and eradicate by will power or even by 
pride, although she succeeded in controlling it, 
in not permitting it to materialize. Having 
come into the gloom of her bitter decision, she 
did not budge. The more it hurt her, the more 
she clung to it, with a kind of frenetic exalta¬ 
tion—the exaltation of a flagellant. But there 
were moments—and she told herself that the 
reasons were strictly physical, due to the grow¬ 
ing child within her womb; knew, too, sub¬ 
consciously, that in thus explaining it to herself 
she lied to herself—when from the centre of her 
being pulses of life seemed to reach out to the 
past, out to her father . . . “my father no 


230 


SHACKLED 


longer!” she would add, almost automatically; 
and she did not know that with each repetition, 
because the words became more and more au¬ 
tomatic and therefore more and more meaning¬ 
less, she weakened the effect. 

She was on the point of telling her husband. 
Then she saw the scar on his face. She re¬ 
membered her oath. Again her pride over¬ 
came her, her bitterness; and she was silent. 

Only when Hassan spoke, so gently, of their 
child to come, she cuddled in his arms and 
kissed him. 

“Hassan,” she said, “let us promise to each 
other one thing.” 

“Anything, dear.” 

“When our little son comes . . .” 

“Perhaps it will be a little daughter.” 

“No, no, no. A son! I know it. I feel it. 
Besides—” she laughed—“did I not follow el- 

Fosiha’s advice to the letter-? Did I not 

avoid buttermilk and pluck three hairs from 
your beard, paining you considerably?” 

She was serious once more. 

“When our son comes,” she went on, “we 
must never let our pride take issue with our 
love, nor our love with our pride.” 

He knew what she meant. He, too, had 



SHACKLED 


231 


heard the news. Abubekr Sabri had told him. 
He understood the struggle in Gouthia’s soul. 

“There is no danger,” he smiled. “I am 
not a proud man.” 

“But I am a proud woman. And so—I 
promise!” 

“So do I, heart of my heart!” 

* * * * 

She was silent again. 

Incessantly, beyond her control, her thoughts 
ran to her father. Never before, since she had 
left him, had she been conscious of so imperi¬ 
ous a desire to see him, to hear his voice, to 
stand by his side now that he was a Shareef no 
longer in pride and prejudice, but a humble 
dervish. 

At one moment the feeling nearly obliterated 
the memory of her oath. But that moment 
passed. 

She sighed. Hassan held her close. 

“Do you love me?” she asked. 

He kissed her. 

“You have blinded my soul with a glance of 
your eyes,” he said. “The fringe of your eye¬ 
lids took me into captivity without ransom. 


232 SHACKLED 

Neither time nor distance can set me free from 
the shackles of my love.” 

“Shackles?” she smiled. 

“Shackles of flowers, dear. Shackles of 
perfume . . .” 


* * * * 

So they talked of their love, their life, their 
future, and the future of their unborn child, 
when the door opened and el-Fosiha entered and 
salaamed, on her back a bundle of clothes 
which she tossed into a comer. 

“I have no longer a home,” she announced. 

She groped in her burnoose, drew out a match 
and a sadly crumpled cigarette, lit it, and re¬ 
marked to nobody in particular that even to 
the noblest of women fate was fate, and that 
all came from Allah, the good as well as the 
evil. 

“Thus,” she continued, “let me not cavil at 
the evil, at misfortune. It would be blasphemy 
unspeakable. Only my stomach—” she 
slapped it—“it feels like a shriveled fig. I 
have not eaten since yesterday. . . .” 

“Oh—■” Hassan ran into the kitchen; returned 
at once with bread and dates and milk and 


SHACKLED 


233 


cold mutton. “Here!” he said hospitably. 
“Gum, hyaqoom, Ullah wah en-Neby, eflah — 
rise, take your meat, and the Lord give you 
life and His Prophet!” 

He bowed ceremoniously, as to an honored 
guest. 

“The Lord multiply your virtuous bounty!” 
came the old negress’ thanks. 

She ate ravenously. She wiped her mouth 
with a generous edge of her burnoose. Finally 
she stood up. 

“I shall go away now,” she announced, set¬ 
tling down comfortably on her haunches. 
“Young lovers are selfish. They want no aged 
people about the house.” 

“No, no,” smiled Gouthia. “Our house is 
yours.” 

“Indeed,” agreed her husband. “Our house 
and all it contains.” 

El-Fosiha pointed at him with her thumb. 

“He is a good beard,” she commented. “If 
your father knew how good he is, Gouthia . . .” 

“Sh—sh!” interrupted Hassan. “You must 
not mention his name.” 

El-Fosiha shrugged her shoulders. 

“Hm—” she grumbled oracularly—“these 
are your wife’s words, not your own, 0 pilgrim. 


234 


SHACKLED 


Rather ride on a beetle than walk even on Per¬ 
sian carpets—say the Shareefs. Hayah , hay - 
ah !—all our goods are of silver and gold, even 
our copper kettles—say the proud!” 

She rose; yawned. 

“I am going to bed,” she went on. 

“What room, Gouthia?” asked Hassan. 
“The little one back of the kitchen?” 

“For you—not for me,” said el-Fosiha 
calmly. 

“Eh-?” 

“I shall sleep in your wife’s room.” 

“You—what . . . ?” 

“We women need no man around in our 
hours of trial. Men at such moments are use¬ 
less as barren spinsters, fit only to break the 
kitchen pots. I know. Am I not a mother— 
seven—eight times—and a grandmother—” 
her imagination soared—“one hundred and 
seventeen times? Hereafter it is I shall tell 
you what your wife needs, and when she needs 
it.” 

“Including,” Hassan laughed, “when I may 
be permitted to kiss her?” 

“Yes,” came her dry reply. “It is never 
proper for a man to kiss a pregnant woman. 
Now I am tired. Good night!” 



SHACKLED 


235 


* * * * 

Nor was her boast an empty one. She was 
imperious—and efficient. Even the French 
doctor, whom Hassan had called in in spite of 
her vociferous and abusive objections, admitted 
it. During the weeks that followed she hardly 
ever left her mistress’ side, day or night, and 
was always within call. It was she who ruled 
the house and its inmates; she who marketed, 
cutting down the prices in half by sheer force 
of lungs and patience; she who cooked—cooked 
so well that at times Gouthia felt a pang of 
jealousy and owned up to it with a laugh. 

“Wait!” she said. “My Hassan will take 
you as second wife, el-Fosiha.” 

“He could do worse. I know all about 
passion.” 

“And more about cooking.” 

“Wah! If an onion causes his loud rejoic¬ 
ing, what will he say to sugar? Tonight we 
shall have pigeons, stuffed with dates and pis- 
tache nuts and well basted.” 

“I, too?” 

“Yes.” 

“And—” smiled Gouthia—“buttermilk?” 

“Not a drop, 0 small face of misfortune!” 


236 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

And so spring sank to its close. An intense 
heat—the harbinger of sudden African sum¬ 
mer—veiled the desert with a moist, violet haze. 

El-Korma seemed washed over as with the 
lazy gold of the tropics. The fields were yel¬ 
low with the glint of kerning corn. The gar¬ 
dens were an entangled, exuberant mingling of 
leaves and spiky creepers and waxen, odorous 
flowers, a great sea of vegetation, a rolling wave 
of green life—new life—and life, too, stirred 
in the little room where Gouthia lay on her 
couch. Life grew in her consciousness, deep¬ 
ening and softening the glory of her eyes. It 
pulsed through her with the earth’s vibrant 
currents. 

“A son—it will be a son—” she said to Has- 
san who was bending over her couch, touching 
her hot forehead with cool, caressing fingers. 

“Surely, best beloved.” 

“It must be a son, Hassan!” 

“Yes, yes . . ” 

“Go away,” el-Fosiha interrupted him. 
“Your wife needs sleep.” 

“But—” objected Gouthia—“I want to talk 
to him.” 


SHACKLED 


237 

“I know what is good for you!” came the 
old negress’ dragooning accents. 

She turned to Hassan: 

“Go away, 0 pilgrim.” 

>k * * * 

Gouthia smiled. She winked at Hassan who 
winked back and left. 

She closed her eyes, day-dreaming. 

There were moments, during the days that 
followed, when she suffered; moments when the 
sufferings, strangely, incongruously, seemed 
sweet; moments when an intense realization of 
loveliness arrested her conscious thoughts, stag¬ 
gering her with a flash of radiant and gleaming 
whiteness; moments when the miracle of crea¬ 
tion appeared to her as something refulgent, 
stupendous, even terrifying; moments when she 
did not feel her body at all, but seemed to sink 
down into vast silences where no sound could 
reach to her without having first passed through 
enormous spans of time and distance that were 
as if cushioned in soft air. 

And all the time she felt, she knew, that this 
new life growing within her own was more than 
a mere individual existence. It seemed to con- 


238 


SHACKLED 


nect her, by a network of infinitely delicate fila¬ 
ments, with all the riotous, impatient life of the 
earth outside that drifted through the open win¬ 
dow of her bedroom with the chittering of song 
birds, the barking of dogs, the cries of street 
and bazaar, and the scent of tulips and late 
roses, of lime and walnut and cinnamon trees. 

Propped up on a pillow she would half see, 
half dream it: a gentle pattering of rain upon 
the palm fronds—fingers of slim, violet haze 
stabbing out of the sun’s lemon welter—garden 
pinks shaking their small, starry faces in the 
breeze—the moon rising in a blaze of silver 
and green—the golden hush of the stars—the 
young sun shooting up in a sea of fire—throng¬ 
ing, passing moments of life, revelation, crea¬ 
tion—whispering fragments of a huge and 
eternal message. . . . 

Message of the First Creator. Allah. 

“Say: He who first made thee to be shall 
quicken thee; 

For all creating He knoweth well; 

Who made for you fire from a green tree, 

And behold, ye kindle with it; 

And is not He who created the Heavens and 
the Earth 

Able to create their like; 


SHACKLED 


239 


Who created man and woman 
Able to create their like? 

Yea! For He is the wise Creator! 

His command, when He willeth a thing, 

Is only to say ‘Be!’, and it is!” 

She prayed often; prayed fervently. 

And there came the day when, in some amaz¬ 
ing fashion, she felt within herself the thoughts 
and passions and dreams of all the women of 
all the world; the mute, inexpressible yearn¬ 
ings of motherhood; the desires and sufferings 
of millions; the reaching up, with a soft, nest¬ 
ing rush, into the arms of God, of nature. 

She saw, very dimly, the French doctor’s 
bearded, bespectacled face, the old negress 
peering anxiously, snapping her fingers rapidly 
to ward off the winds of misfortune, and Hassan 
looking down at her with mute, frightened eyes. 

She saw, more dimly still, as if seen through 
a veil of poignant regret, a memory of her 
father’s face; and with it there rose in the ac¬ 
tive cells of her brain the longing that he were 
here, near her—and there would be no question 
of forgiveness or asking forgiveness—and her 
oath to the Prophet—why—the Prophet would 
forgive ... if he were only here . . . and 
she wondered if she spoke the words aloud. 


240 


SHACKLED 


* * * * 

These pictures passed. 

Came an eternity of waiting, when an im¬ 
mense, black shutter dropped across her mind 
noiselessly, with the speed of summer light¬ 
ning, and she seemed to stand beyond the thres¬ 
hold of her own existence, watching it uncom- 
prehendingly; another eternity when she had 
recrossed the threshold and felt within her a 
strange mingling of delight and pain. 

The pain she recognized. It was a wrench¬ 
ing; a savage pushing; a dislocating. 

But this delight, this great, radiant happi¬ 
ness, was something which she had never expe¬ 
rienced before. Yet she knew what it was. It 
was the consciousness of new life breaking 
through the shell of the old, the shell of her 
woman’s flesh, with a great wonder, a great 
completeness of longing utterly fulfilled; and 
peace came, still as the depths of the desert; 
and then the peace was shivered by a cry, a 
small cry, a selfish, imperious cry—the cry of 
a little baby. 

She heard Hassan’s voice: 

“A son—a son . . .” 

She did not open her eyes immediately. 


SHACKLED 


241 


She felt once more—abandoned herself to 
it with a soft, luxurious surrender—the great 
wonder, the great completeness of longing ut¬ 
terly fulfilled. She did not know how long 
it was before she became conscious of some¬ 
thing tiny and warm nestling in her arms; heard 
again the small, selfish cry; felt the small, self¬ 
ish clutch of baby fingers. 

* * * * 

She opened her eyes. 

El-Fosiha was at the window, raising the 
blinds a little. At the foot of the bed stood 
Hassan, and near him she saw her father, aged, 
bent, rather grey-faced, in the costume of a 
Molawee dervish. 

“Father—” she said weakly—“father . . 

He dropped on his knees by her side. 

“Little soul,” he said, “your husband has al¬ 
ready forgiven me. And as for you—behold 
—I am on my knees-” 

She smiled. She took his hand; kissed it. 

“On your knees only, father dear,” she said, 
“because I am still too weak to rise and put my 
arms about you and touch your lips with 


mine. . . 



242 SHACKLED 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo!” came suddenly the old ne- 
gress’ shrill cry of triumph. 

She ran to the door. 

“I must tell the news to all el-Korma,” she 
exclaimed, “that a son has come to this blessed 
house—may he be the first of many!” 

She turned on the threshold. 

“What shall his name be?” she asked. 

“My father’s name was Fahim,” said Has- 
san. “Fahim is a good name.” 

“A good name indeed,” agreed Mustaffa 
Madani. “A decent, respectable name. And 
yet . . ” 

“Yes, father?” asked Gouthia. 

“I would suggest Mohammed.” 

“Why?” demanded Hassan. 

“Why?” echoed Mustaffa Madani. He 
looked surprised. “Was not the Prophet—on 
Him the salute!—the founder of our clan, of 
the Shareefian families? And—” with utter 
seriousness, staring at Hassan rather reproach¬ 
fully—“is not your little son, too, of Shareefian 
blood? Is he not my grandson? Is he not of 
the lineage?” 

“You are right,” said Gouthia. She was as 
serious as her father. Her eyes, too, as she 


SHACKLED 


243 


looked at her husband, held a faint expres¬ 
sion of reproach. “We shall name him 
Mohammed.” 

“Mohammed!” echoed el-Fosiha. 

A moment later, her call drifted in from the 
street: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo! Cry yoo-yoo-yoo, 0 Mos¬ 
lems! A little Moslem has been born today— 
a little Shareef—a descendant of the True 
Prophet—on Him the salute!” 

* * * * 

Hassan did not speak. 

He looked at Mustaffa Madani. He looked 
at his wife. He looked at his little son. 

Shareefs all three—he thought—of the line¬ 
age all three. 

* * * * 

He remembered Gouthia’s words: 

“When our son comes we must never let our 
pride take issue with our love, nor our love with 
our pride.” 

She had promised. 


244 


SHACKLED 


And yet—they were of the lineage, these 
three. Hard. Proud. Wire-drawn. Inflexible. 
And his little child, his son. Blood of his 
blood, and bone of his bone. Yes. But 
blood, too, of Gouthia’s blood, and bone, too, 
of her bone. 

He loved her. She loved him. 

True. True. 

But there was the future. There was Fate. 
Fate like a blind camel, coming out of the dark, 
with no warning, no jingling of bells. And 
love might change; might turn into indifference, 
dislike. And on that day she would still be a 
Shareef, while he . . . 

* * * * 

He looked again at his father-in-law, his 
wife, his son. A trinity. A unity. 

And he, himself-? 

Outside. Beyond the threshold. Beyond 
the pale. 

And he shuddered a little as, from the dis¬ 
tance, came el-Fosiha’s voice, spreading the 
news: 

“Yoo-yoo-yoo! Cry yoo-yoo-yoo, 0 Mos- 



SHACKLED 


245 


lems! A little Moslem has been bom today— 
a little Shareef—a descendant of the True 
Prophet—on Him the Salute!” 

* * * * 


THE END 


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